The prospects, for many young people aspiring higher education, is a daunting one. The Cayo Christian Academy, located in the village of Ontario has organized two scholarships to help meet that need. One of them the "Gideon" Scholarship is a four year, high school scholarship for academic excellence and financial need; and it is the brain child of social advocate and resident of Belmopan Deidra Smith. She explains more.

Deidra Smith, Coordinator, Gideon Scholarship Program
This year Cayo Christian Academy can offer two scholarships thanks to an effort that we started. I basically asked friends and I put it on Facebook and I asked persons to donate $13.45 a month to support a high school student and I got several responses. I needed five people to commit to the scholarship and I got six, so we are able to provide finances for the students for four years of high school and we will further provide payment for CXC and probably uniform since we got another person on board. I wanted to do the scholarship based only on financial need because I know that there are a lot of kids out there whose parents can't afford to send them to high school and I don't want them to forego the chance to get an education and so the main purpose of the scholarship is for financial need, but also that student must show academic excellence. So they must show interest in school and have good grades and they must be successful in the PSE. Another big part is that we want their parents to be active in their child's education because parents play a big role in how successful student are in school.

Smith also shared to importance of academic performance which is key to receiving scholarship.

Deidra Smith
They will be required to maintain a GPA of 3.0 and if that wavers they have a chance of probation period to get back on track, but again it is for persons with financial need and academic excellence, so we want to keep that above 3.0. It is my hope that the program will grow. Right now we are only offering this one scholarship, but in the future I hope to get more volunteers on board and we can look at different high schools based on the ones they would recommend. So I really don't know how far the program would go, but I hope that if not only in the Cayo District, maybe we can do a school down south, we can do one up north and so I hope that it will go to other high schools as well.

The four year Scholarship is worth over $3000 and is being sponsored by members of the Cayo District Community. Deadline for registration is June 21, 2012. For those interested in applying kindly call Cayo Christian Academy at phone # 802-2009 or visit their website at ccabelize.com.

PlusTV