2022 Awards Presentation Function
Tom Jones with Graham Duston and Kelly McNamara from FANZ
Te Awa Kura Barnett Park with Jane Paterson, Chair of the Sumner Ferrymead Foundation.
Locals helping locals is what we do, said the Chair of the Sumner-Ferrymead Foundation, Jane Paterson. Speaking at the recent Awards function for the winners of a range of scholarships, she spoke of the history of the Trust and how the Scholarships awarded were an innovation.
With further innovation in mind, this year we gave two new rewards: the first of the new awards was for study in Commerce. This was Sponsored by FANZ (the investment advice arm of SBS Bank). The award was for $2,500, but perhaps just as valuable to the recipient was the ten-week paid internship with FANZ. The winner was Tom Jones who is currently pursuing a BCom at Otago University. Tom will take up the Internship at the end of the year and it appears that FANZ and SBS Bank will have plenty for him to do.
The second new award was for apprenticeships. This award is to help young people with the cost of tools which have to be purchased at the beginning of an apprenticeship. This year we awarded $2000 each to two apprentice builders, Riley Matla and Ben Giles which was sponsored by Allan Williams (the Foundation Patron). Two awards were given because we simply could not separate Ben and Riley in terms of worthiness!
In addition to these awards, we gave scholarships to help people in three fields of study as we did last year: Humanities (Sarah Angelo who is studying to become a teacher while she works at Mt Pleasant School), Science (Noah Lewis who is studying Computer Science and Linguistics at Canterbury University) and Life Sciences Feya Durkin(who is studying Biomedical science at Victoria University). All of these Awards were for $5,000.
These awards were most kindly sponsored by oral surgeons RJ Begg, Viki Brinkman in memory of Richard Brinkman, and Viv Cotter in memory of Michael McMullen.
An award was also made for assistance for an Outward Bound course. This is a $5,000 scholarship to attend the 21-day leadership programme and was sponsored (again!) by SBS Bank. The recipient is Ella Lewis who is a cycle safety teacher and surf instructor.
Finally, the winner of the Environment award was Te Awa Kura Barnett Park who were given $3,000 to go towards an assessment of the ecological, cultural and social values of the Barnett Park valley.
All recipients of awards have deep roots in the Foundation’s area, Sumner-Ferrymead. The panel that met with the applicants was effusive in their praise for the quality of the applicants. We had significantly more applications this year and are confident that the scholarship programme will grow further in the future. As Sarah Angelo said in thanks to the Brinkman family’s generosity, she can now concentrate on her studies rather than the financial pressures.