Guest blog, Oonagh Lewis, 3rd Secretary Chancery at the British Embassy, Mexico City.
Some days ago, I visited Monterrey with another colleague from the Embassy. It was a visit of two parts – the first to visit a human rights project that the British Embassy is funding this year and the second to promote the UK Government’s Chevening Scholarships.
We visited the NGO, Ciudadanos en Apoyo de Derechos Humanos (CADHAC), an organisation that we are working with this year. CADHAC’s mission is to create a culture of respect for human rights in Nuevo Leon. The Embassy is supporting CADHAC in one project in particular – investigating forced disappearances in Nuevo Leon. CADHAC’s work with the Attorney General’s Office has been instrumental in achieving progress in these cases.
We also spent some time with victims of forced disappearance and their family members. Later, we called on the Attorney General of Nuevo Leon, who explained the state’s efforts to bring security and human rights protection to the people of Nuevo Leon. You can find out more about the excellent work CADHAC is doing on their website: www.cadhac.org.
We also took the opportunity to promote Chevening Scholarships in Monterrey. The Chevening Scholarships enable bright Mexicans to study one year Masters degrees at universities in the UK. The Scholarships are for leaders of the future across the UK Government’s priority areas.
This scholarship scheme has been running in Mexico for a number of years now but surprisingly, we still receive very few applications from outside of Mexico City. We want this to change so we went to Monterrey to get the Chevening message out to Nuevo Leon.
I gave presentations at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Leon and the Universidad Regiomontana and also gave a couple of press interviews. The response was fantastic, so I hope to have many more Chevening applicants from outside Mexico City this year (although applicants from the capital are of course more than welcome!).
My visit to Monterrey showed me just how much talent there is across Mexico so I look forward to carrying out promotional work in other parts of the country. Applications are now being accepted online at www.chevening.org (where you can also find more information on the scholarships, what they cover and the requirements).
The closing date for applications is Wednesday 2 January, 2013. Please do take a look at the website and apply online. Chevening Scholarships constitute an excellent opportunity to study postgraduate courses at great universities in the UK and become part of a network of around 1500 alumni in Mexico, many of whom hold important positions inside and outside of public and private sectors.