More about me and my situation

Here is more detailed information of my story that you might be interested in knowing.

My background and what happened before I lost my scholarship

My name is Mateo Sebastian and I was born in Quito, Ecuador. I grew up with my parents and when I was 9 years old, my dad got a job in Dominican Republic and we had to move to Santo Domingo, where I ended up living for 5 years. During this time, I got very familiar with humanitarian work because my parents were both working in NGOs in the country. I had the opportunity to visit several disaster-prone areas where development projects to improve the community's lifestyle were taking place. The trips with my mom to school projects became my play date and the weekend workshops were my dad was a speaker became my holidays. Without me knowing it, humanitarianism and NGO work became part of me and my everyday life and this shaped how I then would see the world.

My mom working at a school in Dominican Republic while I accompanied her and helped out

When I was 14 years old, me and my family moved again, this time to Paraguay. The job that my parents were doing in this country was different to that of Dominican Republic, instead of focusing of preventing flooding and the damage caused by it, my parents were now focusing on drought and how to prevent the land from being damaged by it. It was here that I started to get personally involved in humanitarian work in the form of volunteering. I volunteered to help on several campaigns, from "Sonrisa Colgate", which was about assisting children with harelip, to assiting and teaching children in schools how to respond in case of a flooding.

Me and a friend in Paraguay, minutes before performing for children at a school at teach them about floodings.

This line of work was something I was very interested in, but it was not my first choice as something I wanted to study at university. Several very different degrees attracted me, but the one that I ended up choosing was architecture. However, I never forgot my main interest, helping those in need. With architecture, I was very interested in providing sustainable housing for low-income communities. I always stuck to these ideals. After finishing school, I moved back to Ecuador to start university. I had to take a test in order to get in and study architecture in my country. Fortunately, I got a higher grade in the exam than what I needed or was expecting to study in Ecuador. I actually got one of the highest grades of the country, and because of this, I was awarded a scholarship by the Ecuadorian government to study in the top universities in the world. This was an extraordinary opportunity for me and I didn't let it go.

I decided to apply to study architecture at the University of Manchester, but I couldn't start right away. I had to study at foundation course to get the necessary qualifications first, and so I applied to a study centre that had a partership with the university called "INTO Manchester" and got accepted. Because of several misunderstandings between my sponsor and the study centre, I ended up however studying a qualifying foundation course for university but not something that I was particularly interested on, a foundation course on "Humanities and Social Sciences". The modules that I had to take in this course were modules that I was not particularly fond of and not at all related to what I wanted to study. This affected my overall performance in the course and at the end of the year I didn't get the grades necessary to study architecture at the University of Manchester. Moreover, the fact of having to live by myself and deal with a situation that was not what I had in mind and prepared for, lead me to deal with depression. When I returned to Ecuador at the end of this year, I had to go to therapy in order to improve my mental health.

Click here to see the portfolio I submitted as my architecture application, for which I was given a conditional offer in February 2016

How I got into International Disaster Management and how my scholarship worked

After I got rejected from architecture, I had to look for other options to study in the UK. Apart from Manchester, I considered several universities and tried to apply to different courses. However, because of how my scholarship worked, it seemed like the actual possibilities of getting into other courses with the support of my sponsor were very small. When I got my scholarship in 2015, I got it for architecture and related courses, such as urban planning or urban studies. But when I didn't get into architecture because of my grades, I was not accepted in any other related courses either. From a UK perspective, this was not a problem since there are lots of other options that I can choose from, but from my sponsor's perspective, this was not the case. In Ecuador, architecture and any related courses are seen as an engineering degree, therefore, if I wanted to change my degree, it had to be to an engineering related course. This was a problem for me though, because since I did a humanities and social sciences related foundation course, I didn't have the qualifications in the UK to study an engineering course.

I explained this to my sponsors and they told me that if I couldn't study an engineering course and if I wanted to stay in the UK, I could study at the University of Manchester as long as I applied to a course related to the areas of "Health and Wellbeing", "Engineering" or "Information and Communication Technologies", since these were the areas that they would authorise. I searched for courses that would 1) fall into these categories, 2) allow me entry with my social science based foundation course and 3) I would be interested and good at, so as to not ever have to deal with the situation in which I didn't study something I genuinely liked. Later I was also informed the course would have to be less expensive than architecture would have been. Finding International Disaster Management and Humanitarian Response was a godsend. It had to do with "Health and Wellbeing", I had the necessary qualifications, and I was very interested in the course and the way its subjects were going to be taught . It was even less expensive than architecture! Confident and relieved that I was able to continue with my studies, I then accepted my offer to this course.

What happened with my scholarship after International Disaster Management and the money issues this year

I submitted my application and very, very, quite extremely detailed documentation about all the modules I was taking. I was careful to make sure I chose optional modules that had to do with Health and Wellbeing, such as "Bodies in History", "A History of Epidemics", and "Body Health and Wellbeing". The director of my course even helped me formulate and then signed a ten page document explaining why the course and Health were so intertwined. This, shockingly and upsettingly, was to no avail. My sponsors, after several appeals and discussions, even with the coordinator of the entire scholarship agency, where my mother was moved to tears, decided that the course was too focused on the area of "Humanities and Social Sciences, and therefore, I couldn't continue my studies in that course. 

In their rejection letter, they said I had demonstrated an interest in social sciences, completely disregarding the documentation which I had submitted. They knew I was going to travel to the UK in September, they knew this was going to be extremely expensive for my family and they did not care. They waited until February to tell me that I should go back to Ecuador and that they would be ending their contract with me. I had finished my first semester by then, was worrying every day about paying my fees, had to move out of my accommodation because of how expensive it was. My family was not expecting a negative answer from my sponsor and we didn't have any money saved for this situation. 

They have been helping me with rent and food but there's only so much they can do. My father lost his job around the same time I was rejected from architecture and both my parents are struggling in Ecuador to pay for my brother's studies as well while paying for outstanding debts they currently have. Right now my only options are to either find funding for my course on my own or withdraw from the course and going back to Ecuador, but even this can possibly mean paying some fees to the university. Luckily my friends in Manchester and my girlfriend who lives in London, have provided me unmeasurable assistance. I am making things work for now, but if I cannot continue to study in the UK, then it will all have been for nothing. This is why crowdfunding is so important to me at this moment.