India Development Scholarhship Winners

   
 

Introducing out 2011 India Developement Scholarship Winners

After numerous applications, interviews and good amount of deliberation – Antipodeans Abroad are proud to announce the 2011 India Development Scholarship winners. Congratulations Anna King, Laura Keenan, Matt Withers and Ingrid Stear on your success. Our India Development Scholarship sends keen and driven university students to India for three months. Whilst there, students work on a pilot project in the heart of the desert state of Rajasthan, gaining unique international community development experience in India.

We rounded up our scholarship winners to ask them a few questions about what they hoped to achieve during their three months in India.

Why did you decide to apply for the scholarship, and what to do hope to get out of it?

Anna King:
Anna is doing her Master of Development Studies at Melbourne University and heard about Antipodeans through a university lecturer.

“I'm a firm believer in positive liberty and that everyone should have equal access to all the opportunities that life presents. I am particularly passionate about gender equality and if women aren't ruling the world, it should be because we don't want to and not because we're not empowered to.”

Laura Keenan:
Laura is finishing a Masters in Development Studies at the University of Sydney, where she’s been specialising in the political economy of public health. This follows a couple of years working for NGOs in South Asia, most recently as a Communications Officer for a charity based in Kathmandu, Nepal focusing on sustainable development in mountain areas.

I heard about the Antipodeans Abroad scholarship through the Peace and Conflict Studies Centre at the University, and thought it would be a great opportunity to gain experience working closer to the field. I’m looking forward to working in an area that has experienced progress in creating access to education for girls, and to seeing the wider social impact of this. It’s also going to be very interesting to see the changes that have occurred in India since I was last there!

Matt Withers:
Matt is a recent Arts graduate from the University of Sydney and is currently awaiting the start of his honours degree in the field of Government and International Relations. Much of Matt’s time at uni has been spent studying developmental issues and his upcoming thesis seeks to explore some of the structural impediments to economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Ideally, I’d like to not only to assist those in very real need but also to better my own understanding of developmental issues. I believe a strictly academic perspective of development has a tendency to bury human suffering under mounds of statistics and runs the risk of painting a very sterile portrait of the everyday tragedies endured by an increasing percentage of the world's population. At the risk of sounding too optimistic, I hope that this placement provides me with an opportunity to transcend the insights offered by study and tourism and get a more authentic impression of the issues facing the developing world.

Furthermore, I hope I can effectively use what modest communication skills I've garnered while working as a journalist in Estonia to make a contribution to such a worthwhile cause. As a tutor, both of schools students on the weekend and of an autistic child during the week, I believe education is of tantamount importance; particularly in an instances such as rural India's, where it so often selectively malnourished along gender lines.


What are you looking forward to/nervous about?

Anna King:
I have terrible sense of direction and am very worried about getting lost in Delhi! But I'm really looking forward to soaking in all the riches of Indian society and culture.

Matt Withers:
Fears? I've been to India once before and was amazed by the size and variety of accidents on Rajasthani highways. As a keen cyclist I'm already harbouring plans to pick up a second-hand bike from Jodhpur; I just hope I don't end up making a contribution to that Noah's Ark of ornate Indian truck victims!