An annual tradition dating back to 1990 has continued with the awarding of the Gallipoli Memorial Foundation Scholarships where 2023 Broken Hill High School graduates Aldriech Rasco and Ellie Sutton were the winners this year.
Each student receives $3000 in grants to help them with their tertiary studies. Mr Rasco is heading to UniSA to complete a Bachelor of Marketing and Communications, while Ms Sutton will undertake a Bachelor of Paramedicine at Flinders University.
Broken Hill Gallipoli Memorial Foundation Chairman, Merrilyn Pedergnana, told the Barrier Truth up until two years ago, a Fellowship was awarded to primary school and high school students, but with interest rates falling, the small committee of eight people now offer scholarships to high schoolers looking to further their education.
“The high school students, they get statue of a bronze figurine of a relaxed soldier, a certificate, and a book for their library, but there’s never been any interest from Year 7 to 10, so we decided to do a scholarship,” she said.
“What we do now is, we’ve got ex-amount of dollars that we can spend each year so we put out for scholarships, but the stipulation with the scholarship is you don’t have the gap year. You must get your HSC, get your entry to uni, and be off to uni in the following year.
“If they want to buy books, if they want to put it towards their accommodation, it has to be something to do with uni in the following year.”
Ms Pedergnana said the aim of the scholarships was to ensure schoolkids continued their education post-Year 12, but also for the Anzac spirit to be kept alive, which was especially important in primary school.
“What we do now because the Fellowships were no longer being used, we decided with the school kids between Year 3 and Year 6, they have what we call a Spirit of Anzac Award,” she said.
“The kids are invited to do either a drawing, poetry, something to do with what they think Anzac means to them. Each school is contacted and they pick out their best entry, and then they submit them to us, and then we pick out a winner. The winner gets the same figurine, a certificate, and a book.”
The Spirit of Anzac Award is open now for primary school students and will close on March 31.
“We’ll go to their Anzac school program or whatever day they have an assembly where they can all be there and the parents can come and this child gets presented their certificate and their statue and the book in front of the school,” Ms Pedergnana said.
“We’re making it a bit more interesting because kids say ‘oh, this is what you get, I might do that next year’. That’s what we’re trying to do, just mainly because to my knowledge, kids don’t get taught history in schools.
“We just wanted to keep promoting the Anzac spirit to all servicemen to keep it going. So, while we’ve got some money we’ll just keep going. When we run out of money, end of story.”
