This teen arrived in the U.S. 3 years ago. He’s already earned a full scholarship to Villanova.

Three years ago, Philadelphia felt like a mystery to Sylvain Farrel, a 14-year-old new to the United States, new to speaking English as his primary language, and new to attending an American school: Furness High in South Philly.

These days, Farrel’s reality is quite different.

After graduating as Furness’ valedictorian, he’s attending Villanova University on scholarship, living on campus but traveling back to the city regularly to volunteer at a health clinic, leading the youth band at his church, and spending time with his parents and his 5-year-old brother. He’s a big Eagles fan and he loves living in a dorm.

Farrel’s rise is remarkable but not accidental. The conditions that pushed his family to leave Indonesia shaped him, and helping his parents — and his community — propels him to keep reaching for better, he said.

“I think it’s crucial to be successful ASAP since I believe it’s my duty to pave the way for my family to a stable financial situation,” said Farrel, who’s now 17, mature but with an easy smile and a sense of delight about the world. “I love it here.”

Farrel was born and raised in Indonesia, where his family once owned a textile business. Racism against Indonesians with Chinese roots made life difficult — many Indonesian Chinese were forced to change their names. Many were subject to violence, especially after the 1998 Asian financial crisis.

COVID-19 hit the family business hard, both financially and in terms of renewed racism against people of Chinese descent, Farrel said.

“It was terrible; my family was trying to find a way out,” he said. “My mom went to a local market, and she actually got quite beat up. The whole family, we decided we have to go.”

The U.S. made sense: Farrel’s primary language was Indonesian, but he studied English in school. Farrel’s aunt had moved to Philadelphia, and his parents liked the idea of the city’s established Indonesian community, of having family close by.

The Farrel family arrived in the U.S. in September 2021. They weren’t able to save their business; Sylvain’s father now drives a van for a living, and his mother works in a factory. Sylvain soon enrolled at Furness High, at Third and Mifflin Streets in South Philadelphia — a school where more than half the 900 students are English-language learners.

Farrel’s English wasn’t perfect, but his academics and language skills were strong enough that he was able to skip the school’s English-learners program and hit the ground running in 10th-grade honors classes.

Still, American high school was a shock.

“In Indonesia, you cannot choose your classes, you’re in one class with the same students for the whole year for every single class,” he said. “I didn’t understand — what was honors, regular, sheltered classes. I didn’t understand AP or dual enrollment. I didn’t know anyone at Furness.”

That changed. Farrel, who goes by Ivan, made friends quickly. Furness’ Indonesian bilingual counseling assistant — the Philadelphia School District’s term for paraprofessionals who act as liaisons between multilingual students, staff, and families — “became my school mom,” Farrel said.

“She told me I should take AP or dual enrollment,” he said. “She knew I wanted to go to college.”

By junior year, Farrel was taking a full roster of Advanced Placement classes.

He already played guitar, but at Furness, he took up the trumpet. He joined the student government, getting elected president his senior year. He was named valedictorian of his class.

“I was doing all the stuff,” he said. “If there was an opportunity for me to be active, I’ll be there.”

Kayne Puchon, the school nurse, called Farrel “the face of Furness. He would do anything for anyone here.”

In Indonesia, Farrel dreamed of becoming a doctor because he was frequently sick as a child, and that was the only job he knew in the medical field. It also seemed like the pinnacle of success.

But once he got to the U.S., Farrel worried about “the debt, the risk. It takes years to become a doctor. I’m an immigrant, and I need to support my family as quickly as possible.”

In Philadelphia, Farrel learned about nursing as a possible career. He was intrigued.

“It’s like a ladder,” he said. “You can always climb the ladder. You can work first and get a master’s degree and a doctorate.”

Farrel’s school mentor had volunteered at the Unity Clinic, a joint project of the Augustinian Defenders of the Rights of the Poor and Villanova’s School of Nursing, and she recommended Farrel do the same to get firsthand experience in the medical field.

The clinic serves uninsured people; many of its patients are Indonesian. Step inside on a Tuesday evening, and Farrel’s is often the first face you see, asking people about their symptoms, easily switching back and forth between Indonesian and English.

“This is a low-barrier clinic; we know people, and we welcome them, and Ivan is a big part of that,” said John Green, ADROP’s executive director.

Farrel also spent his senior year at Furness as an intern to school nurse Puchon, completing screenings, making spreadsheets, explaining vaccination policies and health requirements to students and families when needed. He’s the reason Puchon was able to complete her state-mandated screenings, she said.

“He’s a brain: supersmart, super-organized, super-motivated,” said Puchon. “He caught on really quickly, and he’s really ambitious.”

As a first-generation student new to the U.S., Farrel found that getting himself to college felt incredibly daunting.

“My parents were really excited, but they told me, ‘We don’t have money if you don’t get a scholarship.’ It wasn’t a threat, it was a push for me,” Farrel said. He applied to several schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova, because of the Unity Clinic connection.

Farrel pinned his hopes on a national scholarship program and was a finalist, but did not win the award. He was crushed, but ultimately Villanova came through with a full-need scholarship.

College has been a revelation. (It’s not about how smart you are, Farrel said, but how well you manage your time.) So has living in a Main Line dorm.

“There’s not a lot of immigrant population at Villanova, it’s not the most diverse school that you can find, but they’re making an effort to be open and inclusive,” Farrel said. “It’s really fun. You meet these people from all over the area.”

And he’s still carving out time for his weekly shift at the Unity Clinic, managing patient intake. He’s found his place, but he’s determined to help others find theirs, serving as a bridge to institutions that can feel forbidding to those new to the U.S.

“I want to bring good to the community,” he said. “Volunteering in the clinic doesn’t mean that I’m just giving my ability to help the community, but it gives me a sense of fulfillment, experience working in a health-care setting, and deeper knowledge of the health-care issues America’s facing right now.”

It’s early in his studies, but Farrel thinks he’d like to begin his nursing career in a hospital emergency department, and eventually work his way up to being a nurse anesthetist or earning his doctorate in nursing.

“I know,” Puchon said, “that he will be an exceptional, caring, empathetic nurse.”