More than 40 learners have received educational assistance
through TPP's scholarship and financial-support efforts
over the past three years.
Believe in potential.
Open the opportunity.
Pay it forward.
Someone helped me reach farther. Our Foundation exists to help the next learner do the same.
The TPP Foundation is being built to help promising, hardworking learners access personalized educational support when cost would otherwise stand in the way—and to grow over time into a broader source of educational opportunity, enrichment, and partnership.
Someone believed in us before the outcome was certain.
The Foundation carries that belief forward by turning past support into new opportunities for learners whose potential deserves a chance.
Read more.Potential should not be limited simply because resources are.
We help remove financial barriers so motivated learners can reach personalized tutoring, mentoring, and academic support when it can matter most.
Read more.The right educational support can change what becomes possible next.
A timely investment in one learner can open doors to confidence, achievement, college, career, and a broader sense of what they can become.
Read more.A gift can become a legacy when its impact reaches the next learner.
Every contribution extends that opportunity forward—helping another learner build the knowledge, confidence, and independence to create opportunities of their own.
Read more.Legacy
Everyone has a hero who believed in them before anyone else did.
A teacher who saw something in us before we saw it in ourselves. A coach or mentor who refused to give up on us. A first responder or service member who showed up when it mattered most. A parent or grandparent who gave more than they ever asked for in return. The Unsung Heroes Scholarship exists to honor all of them — and it started with one hero in particular.
For TPP's founder, James, that hero was his maternal grandmother, Teodola Ferarren Tabayoyong — known to her grandchildren as "Mama" or "Nanay." She served as a Red Cross nurse in the Philippines during World War II, and after the death of her husband, she left her home country to build a future for her two children. She eventually settled in Chicago and helped pave the way for her two children — including James's own mother — to immigrate in the 1960s, and for the generations that followed them.
Her home was marked by warmth, hospitality, laughter, curiosity, imagination, and an expectation that thought and work should be done with excellence.
Her Greatest Gift Was Belief
Her devotion to her daughter — James's mother — never wavered, and it carried forward into the next generation. She helped raise James too, through the ordinary things that add up to everything: babysitting, encouragement, simply showing up — and helped make his college education possible. But her greatest gift was never the material help. It was belief in him: the conviction that he could imagine a better future and go build it. That same gratitude extends to his mother and father, to his other grandmother on his father's side, and to the teachers, mentors, and exemplary people who challenged and inspired him toward personal excellence — Premo, Prochaska, Schroeder, Pesola, Putman, Anderson, Fox, McCauley, Lapp, Mestek, Hart, and Kilkenny, just to name a few. Their belief in a young student still echoes in the name of this scholarship today.
She ultimately left her grandchildren both a material inheritance and a place in the heart of Chicago that would remain a family home. But her deepest legacy was never a building or an account. It was the sense that someone believed in what they might become.
The TPP Foundation carries that belief forward.
Access
Potential should not be limited simply because resources are.
Ability, ambition, and effort are widely distributed. Access to individualized educational support is not. Families can encounter substantial costs — tutoring, test preparation, college preparation, technology, testing, applications, enrichment, and other educational expenses.
Education can create extraordinary opportunity, but access to additional support can become expensive. The Foundation exists to help when a promising learner and a hardworking family simply need another hand.
The Foundation’s Flagship Program
The Unsung Heroes Scholarship
For promising, hardworking learners with good hearts who simply need a hand reaching farther.
The Foundation's flagship program — available by application, interview, and approval by the TPP Scholarship Review Board. Approved assistance is applied toward TPP tutoring services.
Who Is an Unsung Heroes Scholar?
Recipients are called Unsung Heroes Scholars. Selection considers the whole learner — a good student with a good heart who needs a good hand — not one metric alone.
- Academic effort and achievement
- Character
- Educational ambition
- Financial circumstances or meaningful hardship
- Service and giving back
- Potential
40+
learners supported
More than 40 learners have received educational assistance through TPP's scholarship and financial-support efforts during the past three years.
First came the helping. Now we are building the Foundation around it.
Reviewed With Perspective
The TPP Scholarship Review Board
Scholarship applications are reviewed through a TPP Board that brings together perspectives including: a former TPP parent; a public-school educator; former TPP students; and two corporate philanthropists interested in educational opportunity.
Opportunity
We are starting with tutoring access. We intend to grow from there. The Unsung Heroes Scholarship is the Foundation's flagship program. As the Foundation grows, we envision a broader mission supporting educational opportunity, enrichment, and the people and communities that help learners thrive.
Where We Hope to Grow
Educational Access
Expand assistance for learners who need individualized educational support.
Mentorship
Connect learners with people who can encourage ambition, confidence, resilience, and thoughtful decision-making.
School & Community Partnerships
Work with schools, counselors, youth organizations, homeschool communities, and other groups to identify and support learners.
Educational Resources
Help improve access to books, learning materials, testing resources, and other tools that make learning possible.
Technology Access
Explore ways to reduce technology barriers that limit educational opportunity.
Testing & Application Assistance
Support costs or resources associated with educational transitions and opportunities where appropriate.
Educator Support
Explore ways to support teachers, mentors, and other “personal professors” who make meaningful differences in learners' lives.
Educational Enrichment
Create or support experiences that encourage curiosity, imagination, exploration, and deeper learning.
Opportunity works better together.
The Foundation should help connect people who recognize potential with resources that can help that potential grow. We welcome future collaboration with public and private schools, teachers, school counselors, homeschool communities, nonprofits, community organizations, youth organizations, educational programs, businesses, and philanthropic partners.
Partner With UsKnow a learner worth considering?
Teachers, counselors, mentors, community members, TPP alumni, and others can nominate a learner for consideration. A nomination doesn't automatically create an award — the learner and family may still need to complete the scholarship process.
Pay It Forward
A gift becomes a legacy when its impact reaches someone else.
The Foundation is intended to be supported over time by multiple sources, which may include: an annual commitment from TPP; founder contributions; individual supporters; TPP families; alumni; corporate sponsors; philanthropic partners; community fundraising; special events; and, someday, Unsung Heroes Scholars who choose to help another learner.
The Circle We Hope to Create
Pay It Forward
We believe giving back should begin with us. As the Foundation is formalized and grows, TPP intends to make an annual financial commitment to help fund its educational mission.
An Unsung Heroes Scholar receives support at a moment when it matters. That learner grows and moves forward. Years later, some may choose to mentor, volunteer, contribute, sponsor another learner, or extend the same spirit elsewhere.
We hope some Unsung Heroes Scholars will someday choose to create opportunities for those who follow them.
Small enough today to know the learners we help. Ambitious enough to imagine helping many more tomorrow.
The Foundation intentionally begins with a focused mission but is designed to support a much larger future.
Believe in a learner.
Open an opportunity.
Change what comes next.
Teodola's support helped one family reach farther. The TPP Foundation exists to carry that spirit forward—one learner, one opportunity, and eventually one generation helping the next. That is how a gift becomes a legacy.
However You’d Like to Help
Nominate a Learner
For teachers, counselors, mentors, family, or community members who know someone worth considering.
Get in Touch
Support the Foundation
For individuals, families, alumni, or others who want to discuss contributing to or supporting future work.
Get in TouchPartner With Us
For schools, educators, community organizations, businesses, and philanthropic partners.
Get in Touch
Volunteer
For people wanting to contribute time, knowledge, mentorship, or other capabilities.
Get in TouchThe TPP Foundation is currently being formalized. Information regarding organizational and tax status will be updated as that process is completed.
Independently Verified Reviews
Rated 5 out of 5 starsReviews & Recommendations on Superprof Since 2015
We made a really aggressive plan for the last tests and final exam, and I went from failing the class to earning an A.
The results were remarkable: Daniel went from failing geometry to earning an A and demonstrated that he was ready for the higher math track.
James was a huge help—flexible, easy to work with, and gave feedback that really improved my writing.