By Oliver Winn
Four lucky yet deserving students received the Geoff Vickers Youth Scholarship on Friday 21 February, marking 11 years since the scholarship began.
The scholarship, organised by Bendigo Community Bank Warburton, has delivered $60,000 to students so far, which helps them financially as they start university or TAFE.
Senior administrator director June Petrie said the scholarship “gave youngsters a bit of financial support and a helping hand”.
“It can just take that pressure off and can set people up with the right equipment, the right materials or help just alleviate some of that cost of getting to and from [university or tafe],” she said.
The four recipients of the scholarship this year was, Jackson Wetherall, Pearl Saurine, Jerikai Jones and Jacinta Tait.
The $12,000 worth of scholarships was split between them depending on their individual needs, which was weighed up by the Selection Committee.
Recipient Jerikai Jones said he initially didn’t plan on applying for the scholarship.
“I just thought there’s so many amazing, talented people who are going to apply,” he said.
But Mr Jones got the scholarship, worth $5,000, to pursue a bachelor of creative arts degree at Deakin University, with the hopes of becoming an actor.
He’s using the money to service his car so he can travel into campus for university.
“It is important, but it’s not super exciting, but I mean, it is to me though,” Mr Jones said.
Another recipient of the scholarship was Jacinta Tait, who received a $2,000 scholarship to study a bachelor of natural and physical sciences degree at Monash University.
Similarly to Mr Jones, Ms Tait said she applied on a whim.
“Yeah, I kind of just applied because why not. If I can get extra help with uni, that’ll be good.”
For Ms Tait, three quarters of her scholarship money will go towards buying a new laptop for university.
“I wasn’t sure if I would end up getting it, so just finding out I had it was really good,” she said.
