Over the past few weeks, the British High Commission in Kingston Jamaica has done quite alot of work on Chevening Scholarships and with our Chevening Alumni.
We are in the very final stages of our 12 week “Chevening Alumni Location and Engagement Project” for both Jamaica and the Bahamas, which saw us identifying, making contact with, and building a database for the over 180 alumni in Jamaica, and the 85 in the Bahamas. We have now established a formal system of communication between the alumni and the High Commission, as well as for the alumni among themselves.
We arranged networking events, with the aim of encouraging the formation of an alumni association in both countries. We are now encouraged that the alumni are energized to work together, to strengthen capacity for leadership in their home countries, and also to showcase the UK as an excellent place to study and do business.
We’ve set up Chevening alumni (Jamaica/ Bahamas) social media pages and have encouraged scholars to take advantage of the “call for bids” to fund projects of their choice, from the 2013 Chevening Alumni Fund.
The High Commission has also concluded the Chevening scholarship advertising process, the shortlisting, as well as the interview sessions for the 2013/2014 academic year. At the interviews, our panel , in as far as was possible, peered into the future of both countries via the academic and leadership aspirations of the candidates.
It was clear from this process, that both Jamaica and the Bahamas are awash with talented people, who are passionate about leadership, human rights, law, social entreprenuership, economics, accounting, and the environment among other disciplines. It is incredible we were able to reduce the number of qualified candidates to only a few.