The program Bécalos, promoted by Fundación Televisa and Mexico's Banks Association (ABM for its Spanish initials) held the graduation of its fourth scholar generation with 7,683 youngsters who completed High School or their Professional Degree in the current academic year.

Thanks to the combination of efforts between the public and private sectors, Bécalos is the most important education support program promoted by the civil society. Scholarships are granted in priority developmental areas for the country: engineering, science and technical degrees, which support innovative proposals in terms of education.

Amongst its most remarkable results, it is worth mentioning:

137, 554 accumulated scholars who have been benefited between 2006 and 2011

26, 390 beneficiary youngsters have finished their high-school and professional degrees

3, 181 Teachers and Principals have participated in the Education Congresses organized by Bécalos.

521 Teachers and Principals have been awarded with diploma courses at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

The graduation ceremony was held in Mexico City's Colegio de las Vizcaínas. About 1000 students from 20 different states of the country and Mexico City attended this ceremony to celebrate the completion of their effort and the beginning of a new era with better professional and personal development perspectives.

The event was led by Jaime Ruiz Sacristán, Chairman of Mexico's Bank Association, and by Emilio Azcárraga Jean, Grupo Televisa's CEO. We must highlight that soccer player Javier El Chicharito Hernandez also attended the event as the 2012 Generation's best man who, despite his rather busy professional agenda, gladly agreed to be part of this celebration.

With this celebration, the Bécalos 2012 Campaign, which started on May 1st and is to be concluded on August 31st, is continued. The goal is to collect at least $157,780,185 pesos, one peso more than last year. ABM, Fundación Televisa and several banking institutions together with their network of more than 30 000 ATMs participate in the campaign.

The foundations of Bécalos are the little donations that customers generously make through the ATMs. On top of these, there are the initial contributions made by Fundación Televisa as well as the Mexico's Bank Association and the banks.

By the end of the collection campaign of 2011, the banks that made direct money contributions to the Bécalos trusteeship, regardless of their participation with the ATMs, were: Santander, Banorte-IXE, BVA-Bancomer, Banamex, HSBC, Scotiabank, Compartamos, Interacciones, Consupago, Ve por Más, JP Morgan, Monex, American Express, CI Banco, Multiva, Invex, UBS Bank México, Visa y Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

On the other hand, Banco del Bajío, Inbursa, Banregio, Banco Ahorro Famsa y Banca Mifel, offered their ATM network program for the campaign.

It is worth mentioning that from the beginning, Bécalos has joined efforts with the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Mexico's Ministry of Education), the local state Education Ministries as well as the Autonomous and Technological Universities from different States, and of course, with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico's National Autonomous University) and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional.

Through all these efforts, Bécalos has been able to prove that when the objectives are common, it is possible to arouse support from several different actors, especially in terms of education as the foundations for building the country we want to achieve.