Youth travel bursary winners

Here are selection of our winners over the years. We hope they give you inspiration.

2007 - Amy McGuiness & Andrew Decker

Dawes Amy McGuinness, who lives in Dorridge, and Andrew Dekker of Knowle are both former pupils of Arden School.

Andrew is a medical student at Nottingham University and plans to spend eight weeks early in 2008 at the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town is regarded as one of the most violent cities in the world and their trauma unit is one of the world’s busiest, treating 15,000 patients annually.

Amy McGuinness completed her Physiotherapy degree at the University of Birmingham and before taking up a permanent appointment, she spent a period of time as a volunteer at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. Her attachment there was under a charity funded scheme which links that hospital with the Birmingham Children's Hospital.

2006 - Gillian Dolphin & Jenna Ward

Dawes Jenna, 24 year old medical student at Leeds University at the time, spent 6 weeks at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi where she was a volunteer worker in the Obstetrics Department. "Working at the hospital has been really challenging but I had a great experience there" she said.

Gillian, 23, was studying Nursing at Coventry University before spending part of the next summer at a school in Darjeeling in India.

Earlier in the day Jenna had spoken to many of the older pupils still studying at the School and encouraged them to consider planning an adventure of their own.

2005 - Jenny Sheen & Katie Smith

Dawes Katie Smith travelled to Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean on a month long Young Explorers Expedition, and post-graduate Jenny Sheen from Knowle set off to Sri Lanka to undertake a 2-month journalism placement in Colombo.

'I read about the Bursary in the local newspaper and felt that my proposed trip to the arctic wilderness to explore and study the vegetation distribution in the different habitats might qualify for a share of the money,' said Katie from Dorridge, who celebrated her 18th birthday whilst away.

Jenny, whose ambition was to become a features journalist on a national paper, had already graduated at Bristol and gained work experience on a teenage girls' magazine in Scotland and later at the Solihull Times. She funded the balance of the costs herself, working this Summer teaching English as a second language in Edinburgh. 'I discovered the project online and became passionate about the opportunity to broaden my journalism experience working for an English language national daily newspaper based in Colombo,' she said.

2004 - Paul Taylor

Dawes Before applying Paul had previously funded his own trip and spent three months working unpaid in an orphanage in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa where the children were either Aids infected or had lost parents as a result of Aids.

The next year Paul decided to return to South Africa for another 3 months as part of a team to make a film and DVD of the children in the orphanage in order to help raise funds towards a re-building programme for the orphanage. In addition, the project helped raise the awareness of the effect of Aids both in South Africa and the U.K. His bursary assisted Paul with his travelling, accommodation and film and DVD production costs of over £6,000.

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