NWT residents Angelina Arrowmaker, Caitlyn Beck, Isabelle Boucher, and Jena Lyons have been named as recipients for several scholarships for post-secondary education aimed at Canadian women enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Angie Arrowmaker comes from the community of Wekweeti and will be heading to the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver to begin her first year of a Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical physiology.
Caitlyn Beck, from Yellowknife’s Dene First Nation, will be taking a Life Sciences course at the University of Toronto. For the first time in her family’s history, she will be leaving the Northwest Territories to attend a university in person.
Isabelle Boucher is on her way to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It has been her longtime dream t help other people, and she will begin that journey by taking a Bachelor of Health Sciences undergraduate program.
Finally, Jena Lyons will be working for her diploma in Psychiatric Nursing at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta. Jena has spent several years working in communities across the NWT as a social worker, and hopes to acquire more knowledge of her field, so that she can provide better help for the people who helped broaden her worldview.
Seven other women across Canada have also qualified for similar scholarships, which this year alone have totaled $43,200. These scholarships are part of an effort to make it easier for women to enter careers in the sciences. It is the hope of the De Beers group, or organize these scholarships, that the women who receive these scholarships, will in turn inspire young girls of today to search for science based careers.
The De Beers group works with UN Women to help provide these scholarships to indigenous women in the NWT, Nunavut, Northern Ontario and Southern Alberta.
