I wish that more chefs took advantage of the culinary scholarships so that we will continue to see Puerto Rico at the forefront of the culinary arts in the Caribbean. 
In 1989 while serving as President of the Puerto Rico Hotel & Tourism Association, Arnold Benus saw that the island's tourism industry was sorely lacking in local talent. Being a native Puerto Rican educated in hospitality administration, he was concerned that "Our credibility in government forums was almost non-existent because our spokespeople were North American and Europeans. Legislators assumed that profits generated from the industry quickly left the island. The tourism industry had been so good to me and I knew there was something I had to do to give back to it."
From that small seed of an idea grew the Scholarship Foundation for Hotel and Tourism Studies ("Fundación de Becas para Estudios de Hotelería y Turismo"). The Scholarship Foundation is a non-profit organization formed in 1989 under the laws of Puerto Rico and benefits from a Federal Tax Exemption under section 501 (c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code.
