Jesse Ramdeo

Two stu­dents’ high hopes of chas­ing their aca­d­e­m­ic dreams abroad are now on the brink of be­ing dashed due to prob­lems in rais­ing funds to cov­er high tu­ition ex­pens­es.

Christin-Lee Ma­haraj al­ready has one foot in­to a lead­ing UK uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic has dis­rupt­ed fund-rais­ing ef­forts, leav­ing her in lim­bo.

“I was giv­en three in­ter­views and I suc­ceed­ed in all of them and I even­tu­al­ly chose the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter, that is my dream school.”

The for­mer St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain stu­dent re­cent­ly had a crown­ing mo­ment in her life­long aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney at her school’s grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, when she swept the awards cer­e­mo­ny.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj list­ed some of her ac­com­plish­ments that earned her an ad­di­tion­al schol­ar­ship.

“In Form Five I topped my school. I placed first in Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Physics and Ad­di­tion­al Math­e­mat­ics. I al­so placed fourth in the re­gion in Bi­ol­o­gy. I al­so placed in my CAPE stud­ies as well.”

As she en­deav­ours on her path to pur­sue med­i­cine, Ma­haraj must over­come the high cost of turn­ing her dream in­to a re­al­i­ty.

“In Leices­ter, it is ac­tu­al­ly 250,000 Great British pounds and that trans­lates to 2.4 mil­lion TT dol­lars,” she said.

With COVID-19 re­stric­tions bar­ring much-need­ed fundrais­er ac­tiv­i­ties, Ma­haraj and her par­ents, both school teach­ers, have been forced to dig deep to meet the de­mand.

“We are al­so look­ing at the Go­FundMe page, which is a fundrais­er for my tu­ition and that is one of the last re­sorts we have had to look at, be­cause we ex­haust­ed loans, cred­it unions, all that we’ve ex­haust­ed.”

The 19-year-old has al­so re­sort­ed to giv­ing lessons to sup­ple­ment her fam­i­ly’s in­come, as hopes of gain­ing tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment in oth­er ar­eas were dashed by the pan­dem­ic.

Christin-Lee Maharaj

But with­in the prob­lems posed by the pan­dem­ic, the as­pir­ing doc­tor has found pur­pose.

“If I were giv­en the chance to make a dif­fer­ence, I re­al­ly want to do that in any way I can, so it has en­cour­aged me and giv­en me a deep­er ap­pre­ci­a­tion for all health­care work­ers and front­line work­ers, it has giv­en me strong re­in­force­ment.”

Ma­haraj lament­ed that the fi­nan­cial fall­out ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the pan­dem­ic and the chal­lenges of even rais­ing the nec­es­sary funds could pre­vent some of the coun­try’s bright­est minds from ac­cess­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion.

“I want to point out that a lot of our stu­dents are get­ting in­to the top Ivy League uni­ver­si­ties through­out the world and it is un­for­tu­nate­ly com­mon that many can­not af­ford to go to these uni­ver­si­ties de­spite their po­ten­tial.”

The pan­dem­ic has al­so pre­vent­ed casi­no work­er Ruiz Ali from gen­er­at­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port to cov­er his son’s ex­pens­es to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas in the Unit­ed States.

His son, Azarius Ali, a for­mer Fa­ti­ma Col­lege stu­dent, has re­ceived a par­tial schol­ar­ship.

“Every day I wake up is a day clos­er to the dead­line and it’s like an ex­tra brick on my shoul­der and I’m try­ing to push this Go­FundMe page to see how much as pos­si­ble and maybe pay it off,” Ali told Guardian Me­dia.

Ali said as a par­ent, it was heart­break­ing to see his child’s dream fade. To as­sist Christin-Lee, you can vis­it the Go­FundMe page “Help Chris­t­ian be­come a doc­tor” and for Ali, it is fund­met­nt.com/cam­paign/funds-need­ed-for-par­tial-soc­cer-schol­ar­ship.