Nurturing future leaders through education

Macquarie Bank’s Shemara Wikramanayake is the guest speaker at a major fundraising dinner for UNSW Law’s Tram Nguyen Scholarship on Friday 13 September.

The dinner, at the International Restaurant in Canley Vale, aims to raise funds for the scholarship, which assists students from non-selective schools in Sydney’s south-west to study law at UNSW.

Guest speaker Ms Wikramanayake is a UNSW Law alumna and Head of Funds Group at Macquarie Bank. Passionate about tertiary education as a way of tackling social disadvantage, Wikramanayake and a friend set up the Serendipity Scholarship Fund with World Vision Australia to help gifted children from third world countries obtain tertiary education and vocational training. 

The Ngoc Tram Nguyen Scholarship is named in the memory of a former Cabramatta student who came to Australia as a young refugee and left school early. A gifted young woman, Tram’s ambition was to come to university to study law and to use her degree to help her friends and her community. She enrolled in the University’s preparatory program, but tragically died in an accident in 2004. 

The first recipient of the scholarship, Victor Lam, is now in the second year of his law degree.

“Selection for the $5,000-a-year scholarship considers socio-demographic circumstances, including financial hardship,“ said Dean of UNSW Law, Professor David Dixon. “So far, we have raised enough funds to allow the scholarship to be awarded only once every two or three years. Our aim is to raise enough so that the scholarship can be awarded each year.”

School students from Fairvale High, Cabramatta High and Canley Vale will be attending and have the opportunity to talk with scholarship recipient Victor Lam, other UNSW law students and alumni about studying at UNSW.

What: The Ngoc Tram Nguyen Scholarship dinner

Where: The International Restaurant, Level 1, 42 Canley Vale Road, Canley Vale.

When: Friday 13 September, 2013

Ticket price of $60 includes an eight-course Vietnamese banquet. Bookings can be made online.

Media contact: Steve Offner, UNSW Media Office, 02 9385 1583, 0424 580 208