Scholarships help Swan Hill students set sights high

Freemasons Foundation Victoria Chair Rodney Lavin, Scholarship recipients Matthew Gardner, Hannah Storer, Allen Veloso, and Worshipful Master David Rushton

This year, four deserving young people from the Swan Hill / Kerang area will find the financial drawbacks of attending tertiary study a little easier. In late January, our Chairman Rodney Lavin attended the presentation of four $5,000 Educational Scholarships.

The presentation took place in the company of the Tresco and Chisel United Lodge in Swan Hill. The Tresco Masonic Lodge has provided education scholarships for more than three decades. The Lodge scholarships have been known, since 2017, as the “The Jodie Knox Memorial-Tresco Masonic Scholarship”. It was Jodie who suggested using fundraising proceeds for a Tertiary Scholarship program, and this suggestion was put forward by her mother and her father, a Tresco Lodge member. The scholarship took Jodie’s name after she sadly passed away from cancer.

Her call to assist students in the region with financial support for their studies continues and recently has had an even larger reach. The amalgamation of the Tresco and Chisel Lodges triggered an enlargement of the drawing area for this program to include all the Secondary Schools from Swan Hill to Kerang and including all Secondary Schools in the Barham and Cohuna areas.

With the support of FFV, the Tresco and Chisel United Lodge invited students from the region to apply for scholarships, distributing application forms to the schools in August 2021 and inviting prospective applicants to submit them as soon as they were informed of their ATAR results. The scholarship recipients are Allen Veloso, Kerang Technical High School , Matthew Gardner; Swan Hill College; Mena Keighran, St Mary MacKillop College, and Hannah Storer, St Mary McKillop College.

Many of the successful scholarship applications to FFV benefit from a student's involvement in volunteer work. It is our hope that these active and engaged young students will continue to be involved in their community throughout their university life, their career, and if possible into retirement. We believe that the more than $400,000 in Scholarships, Awards and Bursaries that FFV distributes each year supports Victorian youth in achieving their education goals with community improvement in mind.