Community
13 February, 2024
Making dreams happen
FOUR overachieving girls from the Far North will be able to kickstart their educational dreams after being awarded four scholarships worth $6000 in total from Zonta Cairns.
As part of not-for-profit Zonta Cairns’ annual awards, the encouragement and vocational awards for girls – Sophie Gavin from Peace Lutheran College, Mishael Corea from Malanda State High School, Tehel Hayman-Rubach from Babinda State High School and Grace Carter from Bentley Park College – will be able to start their tertiary education and make a change for women in the future.
The four girls were chosen from a cohort of 23 applicants from Cairns up to the Cape.
Zonta Cairns advocacy chairwoman Mary Potter said it had been a great year for the awards with extra funding and high-quality applicants.
“We usually have $5000 for the awards, but this year we had an extra $1000 thanks to the donations of our sponsors Mary Ann Stokes from Drilling Around, who contributed $5000, and Yolonde Entsch, who donated $1000,” she said.
Mrs Potter said she was excited with the quality of applicants.
“For example, one of our winners, Mishael Corea, has already been to Sri Lanka and she’s already seen and worked with people displaced by the war and she wants to do a degree in humanitarian law to go back and do that. She’s only 17.”
Encouragement award winner Sophie Gavin will go on to study a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at James Cook University with her $2000 grant, aiming to bring a focus on women’s health and better diagnosis for women.
The encouragement award’s second winner, Mishael Corea, will undertake a business and humanitarian law degree at the University of Newcastle which she’d like to use to volunteer and mentor women in remote communities.
The two vocational award winners – Tehel Hayman-Rubach and Grace Carter – will use their $1000 funds for a boilermaker apprenticeship at Komatsu and a Cert III in Early Childhood and Education and Care and a diploma in Early Childhood at TAFE respectively. “These girls are going to male-dominated industries trying to make a change for women and I believe they can change the world,” Mrs Potter said.
Applications for 2025 will be available by term four and sent to all schools in the region. They also can be downloaded from the Zonta Cairns website
