One hun­dred and six­ty UWI stu­dents were each the re­cent re­cip­i­ents of a $5,000 bur­sary from the UWI De­vel­op­ment and En­dow­ment Fund (UWIDEF).The cheques were dis­trib­uted at the uni­ver­si­ty's 2012 award cer­e­mo­ny on Jan­u­ary 24 at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um of the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

Over the past 23 years, UWIDEF has do­nat­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly to­wards the ed­u­ca­tion of un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate stu­dents who re­quire sup­port. Through its two ma­jor fundrais­ers–the UWI Fete and UWI Golf Chal­lenge–the fund has been in­creas­ing­ly suc­cess­ful in rais­ing the fi­nance that trans­late in­to bur­saries.

The award cer­e­mo­ny in­clud­ed brief re­marks by Ronald Har­ford, UWIDEF chair­man, and Dr Ian Sam­my, deputy dean of clin­i­cal sci­ences, while rep­re­sen­ta­tives from An­gos­tu­ra, loy­al con­trib­u­tors to the UWI Fete, as­sist­ed with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the cheques. The UWI De­vel­op­ment and En­dow­ment Fund (T&T) was launched in April 1989, with its pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive be­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a fund to pro­vide schol­ar­ships to un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate stu­dents to al­le­vi­ate the fi­nan­cial hard­ship of se­lect­ed stu­dents.

The fund is man­aged by a com­mit­tee com­pris­ing mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, UWI alum­ni and the wider uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty.The cur­rent com­mit­tee in­cludes: Ronald Har­ford (chair­man), Dr Deirdre Charles, Pe­ter Clarke, Wal­ton James, David Lewis, Lu­cille Mair, Jer­ry Med­ford, Den­nis Ramdeen, Chris­tine Sa­hadeo, Rad­hi­ca Saith, Prof Clement Sankat, Lisa Wick­ham, Cheri­dan Woodruffe and Vic­tor Cow­an (sec­re­tary).