Toronto Raptors’ Chris Boucher Launches Scholarship For Caribbean Students: ‘Something I’ve Always Wanted To Do’

etcanada.com:

Chris Boucher’s story is as improbable as they come. Born in St. Lucia, the Toronto Raptors power forward immigrated to Canada with his mother when he was 5, and grew up in poverty in Montreal’s north end.

He dropped out of school at 16, and faced homelessness while working as a dishwasher at a St-Hubert restaurant. Eventually, he found a way into the NCAA, but went undrafted due to a torn ACL.

Today, despite all those obstacles, he’s an NBA champion. Now, Boucher wants to do all he can to help other kids beat the odds like he did.

So he’s teamed up with G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Toronto Metropolitan University to launch a new scholarship aimed at helping five students of Caribbean descent achieve their academic goals. READ MORE: Drake’s Son Adonis, 5, Is Given All The Candy At Toronto Raptors Game After That Viral Moment The SlimmDuck Scholarship will provide financial assistance to one student each year for the next five years, specifically supporting those who have incomplete admission requirements for a conventional pathway to a university degree. “Just thinking about how my story went and how lucky and blessed I got, I don’t want to forget and be ungrateful,” Boucher tells ET Canada. “So I felt like it’s my job to give a chance to other people to have similar opportunities and get to do better for [themselves], for their lives and just to get better just in general, because I feel like [they] never got help like that before.