Phillip T. Chigiya, 7th Erik Holst Fund awardee

The application period for the Prof. Erik Holst Fund AM2017 GA Scholarship has ended on December 1st, 2017.

The Fund received 69 applications in total from all 5 IFMSA Regions, which were evaluated in two rounds.

The awarded medical student to receive the 7th “Erik Holst” GA Scholarship was announced on December 12th, 2017 and it was Mr. Phillip T. CHIGIYA from Zimbabwe, who attended the IFMSA GA – March Meeting 2018 in Egypt.

The Fund first announced the call for applications for the scholarship on November 18th, 2017 over the IFMSA General server, Erik Holst Facebook page and erikholstfund.com and provided a timespan of almost 2 weeks for receiving applications online. The first announcement was also posted on various IFMSA-related Facebook groups, and was followed by 1 reminder as the deadline approached. The deadline for receiving applications expired on December 1st, 2017 at 23:59 (GMT/UTC). The application procedure was done at our website erikholstfund.com by filling in an online application form, which included a CV and a Motivation Letter of each applicant as a prerequisite for application submission. Through these two texts, we would be able to better become acquainted with each candidate and take a thorough look into their aspirations from their possible participation in the GA, their vision of IFMSA and themselves in it, as well as their background and achievements both academic, professional and personal. As the scholarship aims mainly in students who cannot attend the GA due to financial constraints, special attention was given to any relevant information provided by the applicant. Applicants that haven’t attended a GA before, and those who had previously applied for our scholarship programme were also seen in a more favorable way.

After the 1st round of evaluation, a ranking list of all applicants was determined. Then, all applicants were arranged according to IFMSA Region and the first 2 of each Region were chosen, which provided us with a list of 15 finalists in total, because we encountered ties in some Regions. Then, a 2nd round of evaluation followed, starting with these 15 finalists, which led us to the final ranking list that gave the winner of the scholarship.

Finally, we would like to thank once again all those who applied, especially those who made it to the list of the finalists. We are sorry that we could not give more scholarships this time, but hopefully we will be able to do so for the next GA, that is the AM2018! We do encourage all of the applicants to reapply next time, when the call for applications is released! We will be happy to receive your applications once again when time comes!

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The Prof. Erik Holst Fund Board of Directors 2017-2018: Konstantinos Roditis (Chair), Yon Chong (Secretary), Stefan Buttigieg (External Relations Officer), and Carlos Acosta (IFMSA President).

The Prof. Erik Holst Fund Alumni Partners: Ljiljana Lukic, Giacomo Cinelli,  Ahmet Murt