Media Release
Mangaluru, Sep 3: In an impetus to create more professionals in the medical and allied health fields the Father Muller Charitable Institutions (FMCI) have instituted a scholarship programme to help socio-economically weaker students to dream big and be a part of the healthcare sector.
The health care professionals have many subjects and years of studies added to it is the amounting financial burden on the family. With COVID many students wanting to enter the professional healthcare sector are reluctant or persuaded not to enter due to financial constraints. Seeing this as an opportunity and the yearning of students to be self reliant and healthcare workers, FMCI instituted the programme and has helped over 50 students pursuing studies in the institution. Over 40 lac worth scholarship was given to the students of these sister colleges.
The management committee of FMCI headed by director Fr Richard Aloysius Coelho committed to bringing in an action plan to help the economically poor but meritorious students into medical and allied health education. What was once free ship or fee concession for poor students has been enhanced into scholarship with a difference ‘making professional of all’. The scholarships are provided to all deserving and selected students from all the sister concerns of FMCI, but due to examinations of various courses at different times, scholarships were instituted for students of Father Muller Medical College and the Father Muller College of Allied Health Sciences on Friday September 3.
The main aims of the scholarship’s are:
- Recognize meritorious students
- Identify socioeconomically poor deserving students (in line with the charitable nature of the institution)
- Help in reducing the financial burden of professional course on the student and their guardians
- Impetus for other socio-economically poorer students to dream big and enter professional homeopathic/medical/allied health/nursing/paramedical courses
Fr Ajith B Menezes who compered the programme gave a brief of the institutions scholarship programme and urged the students to nudge themselves even better and be of help in their later years to others. He echoed the sentiments of the director and made the students promise to themselves to be better as an individual and better as a person in this planet.
In his presidential remark, Fr Richard Aloysius Coelho focused on the ‘Joy’ of giving the scholarships to the students, hoping that it becomes a catalysts in their professional life and inculcate this same behaviour of giving to others in need. Elaborating with an allegory of a boy who persistently asked for a pair of shoes from his mother, seeing a person without a limb tells his mother to share the money collected for the shoes with the person. This giving should not be stopped in one’s life, it only brings joy. Hard work; was the next mantra he pointed on, whose benefits reap bountiful harvest in professional life and personal life too. Lastly he said if not for a flower a petal would do good, meaning that sharing a little goes long way, as the students body is huge and giving even a few scholarships’ will spread the fragrance of success far and wide.
The whole programme echoed in the tone reverberated by St Paul in one of his letters ‘God blesses a cheerful and giving man’. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. It is also said that ‘give till it hurts’ and so God will bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
Due to the COVID protocol in place only 7 students and their guardians were invited in the presence of the management to receive the scholarship. Scholarships were given by the director FMCI and Fr Rudolph Ravi D’Sa administrator FMMCH.
It was a wonderful yet meaningful beginning for the Father Muller Charitable Institutions in instituting a scholarship envisioning creation of more professionals in the medical sector and a dream that has come through with the director’s approval said Dr JP Alva, dean FMMC who also gave his closing remarks and word of thanks.
The list of students were read by the FMCOAHS dean Dr Antony Sylvan D’Souza.