AFUWI scholarship awardees grateful
UNIVERSITY graduates routinely extol the virtues of their tertiary institution as “opening doors” for them. That is true of Moonmatie Revie Seeteram, but she is equally happy that some doors were emphatically closed.
A recipient of the Jamaica and Guyana Pilgrim Bursary for Guyanese students 2013-2014, which saw her attain a degree in journalism from Caribbean Institute of Media and Communications, on completion Seeteram read for an LLB and is now qualified to practise in Jamaica and her native Guyana.
Acknowledging that the “family is the best support system”, Seeteram also realised early that the culture in her small village would see her married in short order and destined to a life of drudgery like many of her other young female relatives and friends.
The high achiever says that “at 16 I knew I had to believe in me more than my community believed in me. I studied hard and getting that UWI scholarship was the best thing that could have ever happened to me”.
Vernique Miller, recipient of the Dr Cyrus McCalla Scholarship for 2021/2022, a final-year student in the Faculty of Medicine at Mona, remembers well the struggles along a journey full of potholes, twists and turns.
An unemployed dad, the main breadwinner a mom earning marginally above minimum wage, anxiety each semester that non-payment of fees would lead to deregistration, were among the hurdles she faced until she received the scholarship sponsored by the chairman of the American Foundation for the University of the West Indies (AFUWI).
She was in her senior paediatric class when she got the call from Beverley Hunter of The UWI advising her of the scholarship which she accepted, crying with gratitude for over an hour.
She remembers, “I was dumbstruck, I could not jump, I could not scream. I was just frozen. I did not even know this was possible for me. I received my first scholarship before the end of my tenure at UWI, which completely paid off my first semester of final year and all of the final semester of my medical school journey.”
At the start of her studies at medical school she had promised her family that she would get a scholarship and she did. All were elated.
Hoshane Langley is happy for his own achievements too and eternally grateful for the scholarship which set him on a path to have a bachelors and masters degree in accounting and CPA qualifications by age 27.
The son of subsistence farmers “who struggled to provide for their family” and one of six children, he reminisced about getting up at the crack of dawn with his twin brother to tie out the goats, feed the cows and water the melons before going to school. He had market duties on Thursdays and Saturdays when he travelled to Coronation Market to help his mother sell her produce and worked 40 hours per week to raise money for school. In his own words, he was “part-time higgler, part-time university worker, full-time student and full-time dreamer”.
He did extremely well at The UWI but all the money his parents had saved was all used up by the end of the first year of studies. Doors were closing for Langley.
But thankfully, news of the AFUWI/The Door Scholarship came and the stress of knowing where the money will come from to complete his studies was over.
“I’m grateful to the foundation for helping me to generate a bunch of keys that has and is continuing to help me to open doors on my journey,” he said.