Fifteen year-old Gift has been awarded a four-year scholarship by Girton Grammar, one of Australia’s most prestigious schools, where she has been studying for the past 8 months, as a participant of the Rotary R.O.S.E. Initiative.

Gift is one of the four students who were selected by The Father Ray Foundation and the Pattaya Orphanage through the R.O.S.E. Initiative, which operates every second year.

The Rotary Club at Eaglehawk, in Victoria, with help from the Rotary Club of Jomtien-Pattaya, operates the bi-annual R.O.S.E. Initiative (Rotary Orphan Student Exchange) which sends the most committed and eager Thai students to study English in Australia. This year RCJ-P presented each student with a laptop before they departed.

Thai Airways International again provided valuable assistance by donating Khun Gift’s return air ticket, along with return air tickets for three other students. Without this most generous sponsorship the R.O.S.E. Initiative might be seriously curtailed.

The Rotary Club at Eaglehawk puts huge effort and organisational skills into arranging school places and finding host families, as well as arranging for other Rotary clubs to entertain the Thai students. The behind-the-scene skills and talent of our erstwhile PR Director Chris Gibbons should never be under-estimated.

However all this input might not be sustainable without the innate ambassadorial skills of the Thai students. As Director Ratanawalee Loharjun of Thai Airways said a few months ago at the Ticket Handover in Bangkok “The Students are our Future.”

Gift was recently back in Pattaya to share the good news with her friends at the Father Ray Children’s Home and to thank her English teacher, volunteer Alesia from Brisbane, Australia who helped her on her way. Last year Ploy, another outstanding R.O.S.E. student from the Pattaya Orphanage, won a similar award.

Gift will return to Australia at the end of February in order to begin studying on her full scholarship. Gift says “I like my new school in Australia very much but miss my friends in Thailand”. Gift also commented about Australian food being very different to her usual Thai diet. 

We all hope that Gift uses her new “gift” of education to improve her life and eventually use it to move on to University and a prosperous career.