We walk together as friends : the Shalom Gamarada Ngiyani Yana residential scholarship program

Beth is one of the first recipients of a unique scholarship program to boost the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students undertaking medical and other healthrelated degrees at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). She grew up and was educated on Gandangara land in south-western Sydney, but her people are from Guyra in western NSW. Like so many other Indigenous students, Beth is among the first in her family to study at university. She certainly won't be the last, with her younger brother entering UNSW's medical school and the Shalom Gamarada Ngiyana Yana scholarship program in 2007. The Shalom Gamarada Ngiyana Yana scholarship program sprang from a chance meeting and conversation between Associate Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver, of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine's Muru Marri Indigenous Health Unit, and Ms Ilona Lee, President of the Shalom Institute, on National Sorry Day in 2004. Today, the partnership comprises the UNSW's Shalom College, the Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit and the Muru Marri Indigenous Health Unit.