Three bilingual colleges of the Greek language in Melbourne are the recipients of three year scholarships from the Pancretan Association of Melbourne, following an official launch last Sunday.
The scholarships are a way to enhance and contribute to the promotion of the Greek language in Australia. The association has offered the scholarships to St Johns Greek Orthodox College in Preston, St Anargiri Greek Orthodox College in Oakleigh and the Greek Community’s Alphington Grammar School. The scholarships will commence in 2012 and will end in 2015 and will be offered to year 10 to 12 students studying Modern Greek.
By doing this, the Pancretan Association of Melbourne, hopes to influence other Greek community groups and organisations to get on board and support the Greek language in Australia by offering scholarships to the students. At the launch, President of the Pancretan Association of Melbourne, Antonis Tsoudalakis said “every member of the Pancretan Association of Melbourne should feel proud, the same way that I am feeling.
“I feel proud that due to the hard work of the current executive committee, all the previous committees and our members, our association is in a position to support our schools financially and in particular the students that wish to study our Greek Language, our Heritage and our Culture. I feel proud that our Association is the first organisation in our community to offer such Scholarships to our Greek colleges. This way we also fulfil one of the Associations objectives which it was formed to preserve, promote, enhance and educate our second, third and subsequent generations of our language and our culture. He said that these scholarships are historic as they are “an investment to our youth, our students and our schools hence why these Scholarships are costing the association between $30,000 to $40,000”.