State Commissioner Honorary Captain Sim Tze Sian calling for active Boys’ Brigade Sarawak members to stay back to serve locally and offer 60 per cent scholarship to study at Methodist Pilley Institute (MPI).
MPI is offering affordable diploma and degree programmes which include accounting, business, early childhood education, social work nursing, marketing and so forth.
Sim said the only requirement to be eligible is that the students must be active in Boys’ Brigade activities and once they accepted the offer, they must serve in BB whenever possible such as participate in BB’s activities on Saturday unless there are activities in the campus.
“We offer a 60 per cent scholarship while for another 40 per cent, participants can apply for other financial aids such as PTPTN and Yayasan Methodist Pilley (YMP).
“We do not have any restriction on what programmes the students can study; it is all up to them. I know MPI is popular with accounting programmes, Nursing programmes and Early Childhood Education (ECE) programmes. So, they are encouraged to take up these programmes,” he said.
He said students are also expecting to maintain good academic results.
Sim explained that this scholarship started a few years ago to encourage students to study locally and to serve the local community and Boys’ Brigade in Sarawak.
“We realised that there are many young people who decide to leave their hometown or the state for further study and work once they finish their Form 5 education or Form 6.
“Just like society, we in BB also face the same thing and we do not have enough manpower for our activities. We need young people to stay to contribute to society and at the same time build their careers locally,” he said.
To ensure that these young people are encouraged to remain local, every year, BB is providing scholarships to five eligible students. However, he said BB will make an effort to look for more financial support if there are more applications coming in.