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Link Wentworth awards $150k to residents through 2022 Scholarship Program

For the 11th year running, Link Wentworth held the Annual Scholarship Awards ceremony on Thursday 25 November, giving out over $150,000 worth of Scholarships to our residents. The Scholarship Program is designed to help recipients pursue their goals and ambitions by funding a range of programs, from education and career training to sporting activities and special interests such as music.

Since being established in 2011, Link Wentworth has donated more than half a million dollars through the Scholarship Program with 2022 our biggest yet. More scholarships have been awarded this year than any other year, allowing more residents to take up opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.

“By doing this course, it’s investing in my self worth.”

Kristie, 2022 Scholarship recipient

“Our scholarships program aims to eliminate barriers that many community housing residents face due to financial pressures. The scholarship program gives people of all walks of life an opportunity to kickstart their hobbies, studies or careers,” Link Wentworth CEO Andrew McAnulty said.

Two notable scholarship recipients, Musawer from St Mary’s and Kristie from Thornleigh, received their scholarship funding at the event in Parramatta.

Musawer, who is studying a postgraduate degree in Astrophysics at Western Sydney University, is planning to use his scholarship to buy a telescope that will assist with his goal of obtaining a PhD.

“I was thinking about buying a telescope for my own for about four, five years now and it never came into existence because I never had the spare funds to go for it,” Musawer says. Now with the scholarship, Musawer is able to get a good quality telescope that will assist his research and further ignite his passion for astrophysics.

“I can take images at my home and then I go to university and take images from the telescope in Western Australia and then compare these two… And of course, Link Wentworth did make it possible, which I’m really thankful for.”

Musawer receiving his award from Link Wentworth Chair Mike Allen PSM at the 2022 Scholarship Awards Ceremony.

Similar to Musawer, Link Wentworth resident Kristie is using her scholarship to pursue a passion of hers: feline health and behaviour. After adopting a cat to help deal with the grief of losing her partner, Kristie found solace and healing in the Cat Fancier Society community, started ‘showing’ her cat Heather Grace in competitions and even got her breeder’s license.

Kristie has signed up to an online course in feline health and behaviour which will support her passion for cats and support her involvement with the Cat Fancier society.

“The mental health struggle after losing a partner, having to move and lose my previous community… Heather has allowed me to find a community,” Kristie says.

“By doing this course, it’s investing in my self worth and my cat community, which has in some respects kept me functioning through this year because it’s given me something to do on the weekends which is just for me and not for my kids. As a mum who’s a carer to kids, it’s really important to find a passion that you love and this course is a way for me to actually invest in myself a little bit, rather than put all of my self worth into my kids.”

Our Scholarship Program will open again in mid-2023. For more information, visit this link.

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