BY AINSWORTH MORRIS Career & Education writer Sunday, July 26, 2015
EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD Kevon Stewart is like a king among his queens. The Campion College graduate is the only male to have been awarded a National Commercial Bank (NCB) Foundation Scholarship for 2015.
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| Kevon Stewart, the sole male NCB Foundation Scholarship Awardee for 2015. |
The scholarships are awarded according to parish. Stewart is the Kingston champion, and top boy, by default.
His scholarship values $500,000 per annum, and will cover tuition and related expenses for the three year bachelors degree programme in biotechnology at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.
"I feel tremendously excited about this opportunity. The money came at a time when I was not sure how I would fund going to UWI," Stewart told the Jamaica Observer after the awards reception at Mona Visitor's Lodge in St Andrew last Thursday.
Stewart, who grew up in Portmore, St Catherine and Kingston, said life has been a rocky one for him, his younger brother and their single mother, Pauline Satchell who operates a gym and a salon.
"I went to Greater Portmore Primary School and after I passed GSAT for Campion College, I remember my mother could only afford to give me $100 per day to go to school in 2008," Stewart said.
"At that time, $100 could hardly buy lunch after I paid my bus fare to go to school, but I never allowed that to deter me. Additionally, I had to leave school early, not stay back for some extra-curricular activities as I wanted to, and go and stay with my little brother because there was no one to stay with him after school," he continued.
The absence of his father has also been a challenge.
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| The 2015 cohort of NCB Foundation parish champions who were presented with scholarships from NCB Foundation last Thursday, flank NCB Group Managing Director Patrick Hylton. (PHOTOS: PAUL MULLINGS) |
"I heard that my father left me at three months old. He never wanted me, so he left. I don't know my father. I remember seeing him once, after I passed the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) and my mother told me that was my father," the young man said.
"It has always been my mother; my grandmother, Beryl Tarkes and my uncle, Robert Satchell, that I look up to," he added.
Stewart was awarded in 2012 by the Caribbean Examinations Council for scoring the highest in the Caribbean in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) geography examination. He has distinctions at that level in biology, chemistry, physics, geography, information technology, caribbean history, English language, English literature and mathematics. He also has four distinctions in unit one biology, chemistry, computer science and communication studies of Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination. more
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