GREAT NEWS FROM JAMAICA: Dream alive for Medical Student SHENORDO Blagrove....Education ministry, Observer readers helping brilliant Shenordo who wants to study pathology.

BY VERNON DAVIDSON Executive editor - publications davidsonv@jamaicaobserver.com  Tuesday, August 12, 2014    

SHENORDO Blagrove, the first-year medical student who was forced to drop out of the University of the West Indies (UWI) because of lack of funding, has been given a lifeline by the Ministry of Education and Jamaica Observer readers.

Blagrove & Thwaites

Yesterday, Education Minister Ronald Thwaites told the weekly Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange that he met with Blagrove on Monday, August 4, a day after her story was published in the Sunday Observer.

A number of readers who commented on the story on the newspaper's website offered to help the 20-year-old former Convent of Mercy Alpha student get back into medical school.

"She has been very kindly assisted by a number of your readers who have called her... and so she is going to get from those persons who telephoned, the amounts that they would contribute and the Ministry of Education will pick up the balance, so Shenordo will be in medical school," Thwaites said.

Blagrove, who said she had always wanted to be a doctor, specialising in pathology, was one of a number of students whom the education ministry assisted with $2 million each towards their tuition last year.

However, she was unable to find the balance of the fee, which Thwaites yesterday revealed was a further $600,000.

Shortly after the start of the second term she applied for a semester break, but submitted the request late. Then, to make matters worse, she fell ill and had to be hospitalised in April this year.

Yesterday, Thwaites said that Blagrove was one of 34 students for whom the education ministry contributed $64 million in grants of $2 million each for medical studies.

"These were people who came to us with needs and no other way of supporting themselves," he said.

Blagrove, he said, represents "a growing cohort of students from the first and second quintile of the Jamaican society", that is, those at the lowest economic level who... "have done everything right and have qualified to go to university".

The epic importance of that, he said, was that these students stayed in school and did not allow themselves to be dragged into any anti-social circumstances that could derail their future. more