National Park College (NPC) registered nursing (RN) student Brittany Moore received
the Marge van den Heuvel Nursing Scholarship this semester. The award was made possible
thanks to the generosity of Peter van den Heuvel in honor of his mother Marge van
den Heuvel. It covers full tuition and fees for one year.
Moore was inspired to pursue nursing after the challenging birth of her daughter.
She recounted the kindness and support her nursing staff provided to her during that
time. “She was like the kindest person I have ever met in my life and I was like,
‘I want to be that for somebody.’” She explained that both her mother and aunt are
nurses. “ I am a people person. I like to help people. That’s what brings me joy,
to make other people happy.”
The NPC Nursing program was Moore’s choice because it was highly recommended by her
friends over any other program. She said her experience has been “wonderful and scary,”
but she praised the support of the faculty. “I have three kids and it’s not always
easy to study all the time. I have to do dishes and cook dinner and clean the house
and give baths and its hard, but I feel like faith without work is failure.”
Moore is interested in exploring specialties in either oncology or hospice. “Recently,
my sister passed away. She had stage four brain cancer and she came home before she
passed away and I helped take care of her. I just want to be able to be there for
somebody. I just feel like it is really special to be able to be there for somebody
as they cross from here on to the next thing.”
The impact on her children was also at the forefront of Moore’s decision to pursue
a degree. She added, “I want to do it for my kids because I always told myself I don’t
want my kids to have the life that I did. I want them to have more. I am working so
that they don’t have to choose between things and they can be comfortable and have
a good life. I want them to see that if you work hard you can do things and you can
have things and you don’t have to struggle. I feel like sometimes people come from
a place of struggle, I look back and my mom struggled, my grandma struggled, my great-grandma
struggled. I grew up in the projects and I just thought that’s what normal life was
and it’s not. It’s hard to break generational curses.”
Moore expressed her sincere gratitude for the help the van den Heuvel family has given her. “I work really hard, I really do," she said. "I put everything I have into this and I don’t have the greatest situation at the moment, but what the van den Heuvels have done has made it so that I don’t have to worry as much. Because of this scholarship, I was able to make sure that my kids and I have a place to live while I am in school and that my kids have a Christmas.”
