Marcus Garvey Graduate Scholarship Recipients to be Announced Aug. 17

Recipients of the Marcus Garvey Public Sector Graduate Scholarship will be officially announced on August 17, at King’s House.

The scholarship, which is administered by the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, is available to citizens who are in the public sector who have attained undergraduate tertiary-level education.

Now in its third year, the scholarship has been awarded to 44 persons in the public sector pursuing master’s and Doctoral studies in the thematic areas to include agriculture, health, science and technology, national security, climate change, among others.

This year, 19 persons will be awarded with scholarships.

Director of Workforce Planning at the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Donovan Leon, told JIS News that the Ministry is encouraged by the interest of the applicants in nation-building.

“Persons have been trained in the thematic areas to support government objectives with regard to economic development and providing a stable environment for growth as per the Vision 2030 and other government initiatives and policies,” Mr. Leon said.

“We continue to invite applications from persons in the public sector who have a desire to further their studies and to contribute to nation building to apply. The next intake cycle should start in October or November of this year,” he added.

Mr. Leon noted that this year there was an increase in applications from certain thematic areas.

“We have 19 persons receiving awards this year. There was a nine per cent increase from last year for health and particularly for ICT/Data Analytics. We had no submissions last year, but this year they made up 19 per cent of the applicants that came out of the review process,” Mr. Leon pointed out.

The Marcus Garvey graduate scholarships will cover 100 per cent of tuition costs for the eligible programmes at the participating universities.

Scholarship awardees will be provided with a stipend to cover reasonable monthly costs for living expenses, including meals and accommodation.

The scholarships were established by the Government in 2020 to offer Jamaican nationals and citizens employed in the public sector the opportunity to obtain postgraduate degrees from competitive, appropriately accredited universities in Jamaica, North America and Europe.

The scholarship is named after Jamaica’s first National Hero, the Rt. Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, and the awards ceremony is held on his birthday, August 17, each year.