End of year celebration for Gates Scholars

Around 150 people attended the event at Wolfson College, including Trustees and Officers of the Gates Cambridge Trust, Scholars with their supervisors and guests, and some Gates alumni. Vice-Chancellor Alison Richard welcomed the Scholars and their guests.

The party comes just two weeks after the first ever pan-scholarship symposium, organised by members of the Gates Scholars' Council, which brought together international scholars (including Rhodes, Marshall, Churchill Scholars as well as Gates) from across the UK to debate issues around leadership.

The Gates Cambridge Trust was set up in 2000 with a $210 million donation by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The benefaction creates in perpetuity an international scholarship programme for outstanding graduate students from outside the UK to study at Cambridge.

The scholarships for graduate study or research are awarded on the basis of candidates' academic achievement, leadership potential and their willingness to use their knowledge to serve their communities and improve the lives of others.

Approximately 110 new Scholars are elected each year, of whom about 45 come from the US. The scholarship covers university and college fees, airfare to Cambridge and back, and an annual maintenance payment.

One student who feels he has benefited enormously from a Gates scholarship is King Lemuel Mills from Ghana. He has been doing an MPhil in Development Studies which finishes later this month. He previously studied Political Science and Sociology at the University of Ghana.

King, who was very involved with voluntary work in Ghana as well as a foundation for future leaders and the Political Science students' association, has made the most of his time at Cambridge.

In addition to his coursework, he has joined the Cambridge Union to hone his debating skills, and was elected an internal officer for the Gates Scholars' Council which involved helping out fellow students with a whole range of problems.

“One of the main advantages of being a Gates Scholar is being part of a community of scholars and being able to create a network of people who think along the same lines as you,” says King, who is based at Hughes Hall.

He hopes eventually to get into politics in Ghana. “I have always wanted to go into politics, but I needed to train myself,” he says. He plans to stay on in the UK initially, and gain some experience working for an NGO.