Adventure awaits in college abroad
United World Colleges seeks applicants for scholarship program
IMAGINE if the chance to study witchcraft and wizardry was within reach. Imagine if it was possible to be able to fight the dark arts and make the world a better place, or to be a healer and heal the world of its many hurts and pains? J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry may not be real but there exists the perfect school that can help you do just that.
The United World Colleges or UWC is a worldwide movement of schools that aim to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.
It’s an international congregation of 200 students from 150 countries all living together for two years to learn together and make a way to be able to understand each other even with different backgrounds and ethnicities.
Currently headed by Queen Noor of Jordan, UWC International has been collaborating with the Philippine National Committee for almost 40 years, having sent more than 80 scholars in various United World Colleges across the globe.
Having had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being a UWC scholar, three UWC alumni from the Philippines gathered to promote UWC and inform more students from various schools so as to widen the reach of the scholarship program as it mainly aims for cultural diversity and representation.
“The idea is really capturing the imagination of our potential student ambassadors” shares Nicole Severino, who graduated from Pearson College and was the Philippine’s student ambassador from 1997 to 1999.
Nicole is one of the three people to initiate the campaign to inform students in the Philippines about the ongoing scholarship program that gives deserving children the chance to matter and make a change.
“All three of us are alumni, meaning we received the scholarship before. Now it’s our chance to find more people to have an educational opportunity of the lifetime, which is completely life changing. This has actually existed for a while in the Philippines but not a lot of people know, so part of our work now is to share the information,” she said.
QUALIFICATIONS
As the UWC scholarship program is a program that chooses students based on merits regardless of social backgrounds and financial capacity, the application phase is quite lengthy. Applicants must be 16 to 18 years old and a Filipino citizen who demonstrates international and cultural understanding, personal responsibility and integrity, mutual responsibility and respect. They must have compassion and a heart for service, has respect for the environment and most importantly, has a sense of idealism that he or she wants to uphold.
The scholarship program of UWC will be choosing around eight grade 11 and 12 students in Cebu this year, awarding a full scholarship worth P3 million to one of these eight deserving students. These eight students will live and study abroad for two years in any of 15 UWC member schools in Germany, China, the Netherlands, Canada, Singapore, Costa Rica, Italy, Norway, the USA, Hong Kong, Swaziland, Boznia-Herzegovina, India, Armenia or the UK.
For application forms, instructions and questions, visit ph.uwc.org.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Various activities will be waiting for the chosen student ambassadors depending on where they choose to study. Creative, active and service—these words perfectly describe the activities the successful applicants can look forward to, as UWC assures that the education the scholars will get is not limited to listening to lectures inside the four corners of a classroom.
UWC scholars are immersed in different cultures so as to acquire a better understanding of the rich diversity that the program promotes.
According to David Dionisio, another Filipino alumnus of UWC who graduated from Pearson College in 2008, UWC is where you’ll find a German and a Jewish student or an Iranian and Palestinian student sharing the same room and looking for ways to face the life-long clashes of their cultures, proving that the world will be a better place if people tried to look way beyond their differences.
With UWC, making the world a better place and healing it of its hurts is a goal that is real and within reach. And with the help of the whole world, magic will no longer be needed and love and understanding may soon prevail.