December 2, 2008 Long journey from refugee camp to academic scholar Play video

(NECN: Greg Wayland, Boston, Mass.) - He began life in the poverty and turmoil of a Vietnamese refugee camp. Now, he's been awarded one of the nation's most prestigious academic scholarships, which will take him to the United Kingdom for further study.

His name is Kuong Ly. He is 24-years-old and graduated last May from Boston College as a philosophy major. But, once he was just a child, cold and bewildered, arriving in a country equal to his childish capacity for fear and wonder.

Click here to read more from the Boston Globe.

A resident of Woburn, Massachusetts now, he was born in Vietnam, the youngest of five children, his parents refugees from the Cambodian killing fields of the 1970s. They fled first to Vietnam, then to the Philippines before being granted political asylum in the U.S.

Now, Kuong Ly is one of only two Boston College students and only 40 students nationwide to receive a Marshall Scholarship, named for George Marshall, the U.S. general and secretary of state who oversaw the rebuilding of post-war Europe. Marshall Scholarships are based on academic achievement, character and scholarly interests.

Kyong's interest is in the issues of forced immigration and refugee care. He's seen the problem first hand.

And so, the BC campus on Chestnut Hill became for him another kind of refuge. A place

where he could study and learn the types of things he thought might make a difference in the lives of his fellow immigrants, his family and his fellow refugees.

Now he heads for study abroad, probably at Oxford, and would like one day to work for the United Nations.