Awardees standing at the back (L-R): Minister responsible for Human Resource Development, Lenard Montoute, Ambassador Tom Chou, Minister for Education, Arsen James

St. Lucia’s Athletic youth will soon get greater opportunities in achieving their educational goals. This was an indication by Minister responsible for Human Resource Development, Lenard Montoute as he delivered an address at the Taiwanese Scholarship Awarding Ceremony on Tuesday.

The ceremony was held at the St. Lucia National ICT Center, in Castries, where 14 prospective students received scholarships. Among them 7 will pursue their Bachelors Degree and 7 Masters, in a range of subject areas including Civil Engineering, International Relations, Computer Science and Finance.

Minister Lenard Montoute

The Minister said he will soon be pursuing athletic scholarships from Taiwan.

“I sincerely look forward to increasing the number of scholarships that are available to our young people, by pursuing the possibility of athletic scholarships, particularly in the United States. I also have every intention of doing so with our friends in Taiwan,” the minister said.

Mr. Montoute stated St. Lucia is doing well in terms of meeting its educational goals but added that the demand for tertiary education increasing, and that poses a challenge.

“We recognize that having achieved the millennium development goal of Universal Primary School Education, that I think is a remarkable accomplishment and we have even gone one step further in achieving Universal Secondary Education, well ahead of the 2015 deadline. While this is an outstanding accomplishment, it has created and presented us with new challenges-the demand for tertiary education has increased dramatically.”

The minister encouraged the scholarship awardees to take advantage of the opportunity afforded to them and continue to make St. Lucia proud.

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