A Family Foundation for Your Education
Our Purpose
Five siblings who graduated from Clark County School District schools began the LinYL Foundation in memory of Lin Yuejun Lang, their beloved mother for whom they’d named this organization.
The LinYL Foundation honors diverse, motivated students pursuing higher education, with scholarships both for southern Nevada high school seniors and for college studies abroad. To understand the Foundation’s story, we want you first to understand our mother’s.
Our Story
By the early 1990s, Lin had immigrated to the U.S. from China to continue her education. Living in the American Midwest and supporting exchange students, she raised her five children even when the U.S. Army National Guard twice deployed her husband to serve overseas. Our family moved to Nevada’s Clark County in 2008. There, Lin continued to raise us, her children, always encouraging us to do well in school and to pursue opportunities afforded by education.
Our mom Lin 林月君 (Lín Yuèjūn) was born August 1965 in 湖南 Húnán, China. She grew up amid China’s Cultural Revolution, a time marked by anti-intellectualism and loyalty to the state. But, Mom came from a family of educators and loved learning.
After the Cultural Revolution, she was at that time among the few Chinese students who could go on to higher education and 1987 graduated 武汉 Wǔhàn University as an English literature major. She became an English professor, teaching students and continuing to learn. Years later, her bilingual skills provided a new direction for her education. In 1993, she immigrated to the U.S. on a scholarship for a master’s in international affairs.
Our parents met as graduate students at Ohio University. By 2001, Mom was an American citizen. Raising us five children, she strove to impart her commitment to education. She knew personally the opportunities that education could afford us, especially language education. When my siblings and I were young growing up in southern Indiana, she and our father would for several semesters take us to visit Indiana University Bloomington, where they supported exchange students from Asia, often from Chinese-speaking areas
After our family’s 2008 move to North Las Vegas, Nevada, Mom continued to encourage us through school. In 2014 and 2015, the oldest among us graduated from the Advanced Technologies Academy (A-TECH). With some of us beginning to head off to college, Mom continued to practice her language skills, working sometimes as an interpreter.
Although Mom passed away in 2017, she passed on her commitment to education. The rest of us graduated from Valley High School (2017), Las Vegas Academy of the Arts (2018) and A-TECH (2020). Since our mother’s passing, many of us have gotten to experience with scholarships life abroad, in such places as China, 臺灣 Táiwān, Panamá, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Germany, Austria and Czechia.
Our Foundation
We established this Foundation in 2020 to honor our mother by supporting education, as she supported us. (You can get to know us through our Board of Directors page.) As our first initiative, we created the Lin Yuejun Lang Memorial Scholarship, listed by the Public Education Foundation. We awarded our first cohort of six recipients in 2021.
Following on the success of our first year, we began our second initiative during the later half of 2021. This took shape as our first scholarship to support undergraduates seeking to study abroad, as Daniel, Becky and Vana would get to do. This initiative took shape as the Lin Yuejun Lang Asia Scholarship, funded in partnership with the University Studies Abroad Consortium.
During the Foundation’s third year, in 2022, we grew further. We voted in our first new officer to the Board of Directors. At that time, Chief Technology Officer Cisco transitioned to trustee, Secretary Becky transitioned to chief technology officer and our newly elected director Ben Uy, fiancé of our president Vana, took on our secretary role.
Our Vision
With our logo, we strove to embody our mother’s and our Foundation’s spirit of success for those we serve.
The LinYL Foundation logo incorporates a crane flying towards the sun, a Chinese symbol that expresses the desire for social advancement. The crane takes a ‘y’ shape, referring to our mother’s name, Yuejun. Our two main colors, purple and gold, also contain symbols. Purple was our mother’s favorite and sometimes holds associations with longevity. We also use gold, considered one of China’s major colors, associated with wealth and beauty.
We use the number 8 throughout our Foundation’s work to align with traditional Chinese values that our mother cherished. 8 contains auspicious connotations in Chinese numerology. Pronounced bā, it sounds similar to 发 fā, contained in the phrase, 发财 fācái. One can translate this phrase as, “to make a fortune,” or, “to get rich.” In this theme, starting last year, our LinYL Foundation has also been awarding scholarships in the same amount to Clark County School District students who seek to attend colleges and universities.
Your Vision
The commitment to education that Mom gave us, we want to give back to our high schools that committed to us. If you’re a senior at A-TECH, Valley or LVA, please consider applying to our Memorial Scholarship. We accept applications each fall through spring. If you know seniors at these schools, please share this opportunity with them.
Likewise, we want to give more students the opportunity to see countries different from their own. If you’re a college student seeking to study abroad in Asia through a USAC summer program, please consider applying to our Asia Scholarship. Applications remain open as well from the fall through spring.
This is the LinYL Foundation—A Family Foundation For Your Education.
As interest in our humble 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation continues to grow, we have opened the doors to accept tax-deductible donations from interested donors. If our story interests you, and you would like to find out how you can give, please contact us at linyl.foundation@gmail.com to find out more. Thank you!
LinYL Foundation 