THE VM Foundation continues to advance its mandate of transforming lives through education and youth empowerment, disbursing over $6 million to secondary and tertiary scholars through the VM Foundation Scholars Programme.

Addressing attendees at one of three scholarship award ceremonies held last week, VM Foundation CEO Samantha Charles revealed that a total of 74 students, up from 52 in 2021, received scholarships and bursaries.

“The foundation’s work has always been a testament to the power of community. In a time where uncertainty loomed for many, our organisation, with the assistance of our VM team members, helped us to provide financial aid to more young people, increasing the value of their individual scholarships and rewarding the stellar academic and extra-curricular performances of this year’s applicants with additional bursaries.”

This year’s implementation of a digital application process saw an overall increase of 54 per cent in submissions for the various bursary and scholarship categories. Student/learners of all ages were able to vie for a range of awards including the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) Bursary, Junior Plan Scholarship (awarded to the top PEP student in each county) as well as the tertiary-level Future Plan Scholarship, STEM (science, technology, education, mathematics) scholarship and the Master Plan Scholarship.

Sharing the details of the scholarship and bursary packages, programme lead Sophia Lewis highlighted that the 2022 recipients also received financial literacy workbooks through the VM Financial Education to Empower (VM FETE) Programme, aimed at helping readers learn the VM approach and principles of proper money management.

“Our workbooks are age-appropriate and have been designed to relate to the particular life cycles of individuals at the secondary and tertiary levels. We provide financial education because we care. We thought it was important to include this component in our scholarship offer so our awardees can begin to understand how money works or refine their understanding of how it can work for them.”

She added: “Knowledge of proper financial planning is one of the things that separates people from living the quality of life they desire. If we can get our adolescents and young adults to begin thinking critically about their relationship with money, we would have made an invaluable investment that could change the trajectory of their lives, not only for the better, but for good.”

Another component of the awards package will see the tertiary scholarship recipients benefiting from a year-long mentorship programme with VM Wealth Management Limited executive clients. They will also get the opportunity to connect with seasoned professionals with years of experience in their individual academic disciplines.

“We’ve already completed one session with CEO of Edufocal Limited Gordon Swaby and the feedback has been tremendous thus far. The line to success is not always a straight one and we hope that in addition to being inspired by the feats of the different leaders, our awardees will also see themselves in the leaders’ stories,” Charles remarked.

She continued: “The VM Foundation recognises the significance of individuals having proper guidance and points of references as they trod along their academic journeys. It really does take a village to raise a child and for the many years that our own hands have been held by people wiser than us, we owe it to our future leaders to ensure that they, too, are receiving proper guidance. The hope is that this inspires them to pay it forward.”

The VM Foundation scholars awards ceremony took place on October 12 and 13 at respective VM locations in the Cornwall, Middlesex, and Surrey counties under the theme ‘Dream it, Believe it, Achieve it.’