Purpose and passion on a food truck

Published on June 11, 2018

“Being bilingual, having a family network, expressing our culture through traditional food – these are treasures. I did not have much monetary capital, but I realized I had these rich resources that I could use to create something special.”

Cecilia Polanco ’16 wasn’t even a year old when her family moved across the country from Los Angeles to Durham, North Carolina. Ten years before, the family had fled to the U.S. from the civil war in El Salvador.

A recipient of the Morehead-Cain Scholarship and the Campus Y Global Gap Year Fellowship, Polanco started a food truck, So Good Pupusas, between her junior and senior year at the University. The growing business now provides undocumented high school seniors with college scholarships.

This is story number 137 in the Carolina Stories 225th Anniversary Edition magazine.

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