GIVERS
TASTE
good Feeding a need with pupusas by JESSIE AMMONS RUMBLEY
B
y the time she was a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill, Cecilia Polanco knew she wanted to start a scholarship fund for the Triangle community. Not as a side project, but as her future career focus. Scholarships are a way to provide peace of mind, she says, something she felt as a Morehead-Cain scholar. Financial aid offers worry-free comfort, much like a home-cooked meal—and this was Polanco’s aha moment in 2014. “I would bring friends home (to Durham) from college, and I would tell them: ‘You’re going to come to my house, you’re going to meet my mom, she’s probably going to cook for you. You need to come hungry because you can’t say no to her. And you’re probably going to have pupusas.’” photographs by SMITH HARDY JUNE 2018 | 105
