By Globe Staff

Reverend Jesse Jackson and The Rainbow PUSH Coalition have presented 40 Bay Area students with $75,000 in college scholarships, the second time the “Push for Excellence” initiative has been offered to students in the greater Bay Area.

Reverend Jesse Jackson joins some of the Bay Area “Push for Excellence” scholarship winners. In the front row from left to right, Faith Foster, Ivie Arasomuvan, Jaskmine Cato, Jackson, Phillip Harris, and Lorena Hernandez. In the back row, from left to right: Tryrell Blackshire, Ayande Ahmad, Brendan Amechi Okechukwa, Sioana Pulliam, Helen Park, Lanikque Howard and Eric Wishom.
   The effort is part of a fourdecades- long campaign to provide one-year scholarships to students who otherwise would be unable to pursue higher education. Scholarships ranged from $5,000 “Jackson Fellows” to $1,000 “PUSH for Excellence Scholars.”

Other scholarship winners lined up to take their picture with Reverend Jesse Jackson. In the front row from left to right are Porshia Butler, Megan McFarland, Lai Saechao, Jackson, Jeanette Bravo, Bach Tuyet Nguyen. In the second row from left to right are Amanda Wake, Libri Gamez, Jasmine Washington, Christina Saeteurn, Fariola Obledo, Krystina Daniels, Shereda Robinson and Imani El Amin. In the last row, left to right are Milani Pelley, Kaz George, Leumel Smith, Huber Trenado, Erick Hernandez, Louie Dydo and Genay Markham.
    The scholarships were announced last week at the Allen Temple Family Life Center in Oakland.
    Recipient students will be attending a wide range of colleges including historically black colleges, like Howard, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta University; UCLA, UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Davis; Cal State Universities at San Francisco and Northridge; to Loyola Marymount, Stanford and Mills.
    The students are nominated by education, youth, community and faith-based organizations in the Bay Area.
    Some of the winners are graduating high school students; others are enrolled in community colleges, in four-year programs or are continuing their education in graduate school.
    Nationally, Rainbow PUSH provides nearly $500,000 a year in educational grants.
   “We reached out to the widest variety of students. They come from amazing backgrounds, faced enormous challenges at home, school and in their neighborhoods. But they are succeeding and beating the odds. We’re very proud of our second cadre of Rainbow PUSH scholars in the Bay Area,” said Butch Wing, director of the local Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
    Wing said the scholarship winners represent a “rainbow” of students from a variety of ethnic backgrounds –“a whole range of brilliant students who stand out not just for their educational excellence, but also their spirit of “giving back” to their communities and being leaders among their peers.
    For more information contact Butch Wing at (510) 701- 8955, or Vikki Williams at (510) 677-3611.