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Ex-student Ricki Sayers visited Glenaeon
Rudolf Steiner School’s Middle Cove campus to share with her
teachers, the news of a recently awarded John Flynn
Scholarship. The scholarship allows medical students
to form long-term relationships with rural communities
with placements into the same community for at least
two weeks per year for four years work. Ricki applied
for the scholarship because she is keen to address
the needs of her own country’s outback where,
as she put it, ‘people have to wait years for
surgery and potentially life-saving procedures are
delayed due to travel expenses or availability, and
our indigenous population has a life expectancy fifteen
years below anyone else in Australia’.
Although Ricki has known since doing Year 10 work
experience in the office of a GP that medicine was
her first love, it is only now in her mid-20s that
she is finally realising her dream. Ricki graduated
from Glenaeon in 1997 and after completing Liberal
Arts at Sydney University and a year living and working
in Spain joined Medecins sans Frontieres as a volunteer.
Ricki says ‘In the two years with MSF, I realised
that there are three parts to be played in aid work:
the first by people on the ground, the second by the
people who provide the financial support and the third
by the aid company itself in educating the general
public about what is going on around them.’ Although
still waiting to hear where she will be placed, Ricki
told her teachers that she was looking forward to the
experience and felt privileged to have received the
opportunity of the John Flynn scholarship which would
benefit her both professionally and personally.
Glenaeon’s Educational Administrator Martin
Naylor said ‘Ricki embodies the humanitarian
ideals of our curriculum and has, as have many of our
students, gone on to put her ideals into practice for
the benefit of the community.’ |
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Glenaeon Teachers Scott Henderson,
Martin Naylor & John
Blackwood with Ricki Sayer, a recipient of a John Flynn
Medical scholarship
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