The Good Samaritan Foundation is helping senior secondary school students who are doing it tough to continue their education and receive hope and empowerment through a scholarship program. Source: The Good Oil.
The Foundation’s Australian Education Grants: High School Scholarship Program offers students a high-quality, subsidised education in Good Samaritan Education schools, of which there are 10 in Australia.
On average, the program offers 20 scholarships per year to students in Years 11 and 12 who do not have the funds to continue their studies in their current GSE school.
Good Samaritan Foundation executive director Sonya Mears said a high school scholarship eases a disadvantaged family’s financial burden, and the stress associated with debt.
“At the Good Samaritan Foundation, we believe that education is the driver of empowerment and self-efficacy, giving students the self-confidence to take control and work towards their dreams and goals,” she said.
“The Foundation’s Australian Scholarship Program addresses the problem of educational inequity by offering a scholarship to families who are unable to continue to pay for their young person’s continued education at their current GSE College.
“This intervention relieves the stress on families and mitigates the risk of students disengaging from school at a critical stage of their education.
“The Scholarship Program’s aim is to support financially disadvantaged students to complete the Higher School Certificate so that they have a range of career options and a pathway to lifelong learning.”
Ms Mears said a range of factors in family life could create financial stress and impact the ability of young people to continue in their education. These might include family violence, family breakdown and separation, parental illness, including mental health, and unemployment.
“Our Scholarship Program is about breaking that cycle of poverty and inequality and instead providing empowerment and self-confidence, access to opportunities both at school and after leaving school, and through these life opportunities, to create intergenerational change.”
FULL STORY
Scholarship Program provides a pathway to lifelong learning (By Debra Vermeer, The Good Oil)