Last year, Alpha Omega sponsored one of four graduate students from Malawi to attend the PAMCA (Pan African Mosquito Control Association) conference in Ethiopia.
The recipient was Hannah Kosito, and we gave $850 to support this young researcher in travelling and presenting her research.
The students had all graduated with Bachelors of Science in parasitology and disease vector control (Hons) and their papers had been accepted into the PAMCA conference but they had no way of getting there without financial assistance. They all come from very poor families, some of them farming and selling rice to get through university, others barely getting by at all. None of them had ever been on a plane before and had certainly never had the opportunity to attend such a conference.
Because of the timely and generous support of the Alpha Omega Charitable Trust, the students were able to travel to the conference, present their papers and meet with other scientists at various points in their careers. This has paved the way for their next educational and professional steps.
We have recently received updates that with the connections made at the conference, two of the students have been offered prestigious internships and one of them has already secured a job as head laboratory technician at Mzuzu University in Malawi.
Another student has received a prestigious Chevening scholarship to study at University of Aberystwyth and started there in September, another currently applying for the same scholarship after taking time off to have a baby.
Rosheen Mthawanji from the Malawi Liverpool- Wellcome trust who introduced us to these students has written saying “I just wanted to show how much impact you've had in changing these young people's lives. Those contributions you and your networks made did not go in vain. These lives have been changed forever."
Dr Aron Marcus
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