Five senior candy stripers, all on their way to university, have been awarded scholarships for their hard work and dedication in and out of the programme.

The Hospital Auxiliary of Bermuda, a non-profit organisation that operates the Candy Striping Programme, awarded the five girls several bursaries during an awards ceremony last weekend.

Each of them was chosen from a pool of nine applicants, and was granted the amount based on their grades, résumés, personal statements, and hours served.

Michelle Lambert, Rickea Trott, and Sacara Phillips were each awarded $1,000, while Rosemary Swain received $3,000 and Savannah Loder $5,000.

Unlike her fellow recipients, Michelle Lambert, 18, didn’t find out about her $1,000 scholarship winnings until the next morning.

“I didn’t go to the awards ceremony because I forgot, but when they told me I was like ‘cool, I’ve got some money for college, that’s going to help’,” Michelle said.

The CedarBridge graduate-to-be joined the programme during the summer of 2013 with intentions of becoming a nurse. Though her sights have now switched to becoming a teacher, Michelle still found the programme helpful in achieving her old goals while building her patience and people skills.

“I thought it was nice that I got so much input and information because when I told people I wanted to be a nurse they were like, ‘well, do this’ and they tried to guide me in the right path and stuff; I thought that was nice.”

She now plans to receive her associate’s degree for teaching at Bermuda College before travelling abroad to gain experience. Though she’s unsure about where she wishes to study, she hopes to come back to Bermuda before gaining enough world experience.

Michelle wasn’t the only one to join the programme without going into medicine. Rickea Trott, an 18-year-old Berkeley graduate, originally wanted to work with computers instead of medicine. However, after learning that an IT job doesn’t have to be office-based, she joined the candy stripers in S1 out of professional curiosity.

“I guess you could say that I started candy striping because I wanted to see where else computers can be used — so, in the hospital, it was radiology, and things like that,” she said.

Rickea worked with the programme for more than 200 hours, primarily talking with patients and was eventually inspired to apply for the bursary. Despite the intensity she felt about applying, her hard work was eventually rewarded after she won $1,000 in scholarship money.

“I almost gave up on trying to apply because it just became kind of stressful, but I was really surprised when they called my name because I didn’t expect it: it was [the first scholarship] I got.”

After she graduates from Berkeley Institute, Rickea plans to attend Bermuda College where she’ll gain an associate’s degree in Informational Systems. From that point on, she told The Royal Gazette, she’ll be studying computer science at West Virginia University in the United States.

Sacara Phillips, 17, says she has always been ahead of her age, and candy striping has been no different. Instead of starting in the beginning of high school like most others, she began in her last year at Whitney Middle School at her mother’s mentioning. Wanting to get into the medical field, Sacara candy striped throughout her years at Berkeley while performing dual enrolment at Bermuda College in her fourth year.

“A lot of children, they sought the programme and then drop out because I guess it’s not for them, but I really enjoyed going there and interacting with the patients and just helping people and putting a smile on their face,” she said.

Despite applying to many different scholarships, Sacara’s desire to enter medicine made the candy striping scholarship stand out above the rest. Now, after winning the $1,000 bursary, she plans to finish her second year of Bermuda College before receiving her medical doctorate in neuroscience and returning to Bermuda to help improve the island’s medical technology.

“I feel like, because we’re such a small island and a lot of the medical stuff is expensive, we’re kind of behind on technology,” she said. “We don’t have as much technology here in the hospital as they do away, so we’re not able to do as much here and that’s why we’re constantly having to fly people away.”

Rosemary Swain, 18, wasn’t the first in her family to work in a hospital. After being inspired by her aunt, a nurse, and three of her candy striping cousins, the BHS student joined the programme at 14 to continue “the family tradition”.

“It was a great source of community service and it was actually quite enjoyable to do,” she told The Royal Gazette.

Rosemary accredited candy striping to her wanting to be a nurse, but because of the costs of moving homes between countries she felt the scholarship would be her best chance at success. Now that she’s won the $3,000 bursary, Rosemary plans to attend the University of Keele in Stoke-on-Trent in the fall to study adult nursing.

“I’m not really sure what I want to do with myself, because there’s so much to do at a hospital that I think it’s just best to go to major teaching hospitals and learn there.

“I once did a stint in the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute, and the nurse that mentored me said she went straight into a psychiatric degree, but then regretted it because of what she had to do with her patients. So, she said ‘I wish I had that background with adult nursing to help my patients more than I can’, I decided to do a general first and then specialise.”

Savannah Loder is no stranger to volunteer work. She’d been helping with the aquarium and the Keep Bermuda Beautiful foundation throughout school, and as she got older she found herself attending hospices in Trinidad and helping orphans in Costa Rica. For Savannah, then a Saltus student, candy striping was simply another extracurricular.

“My mom wanted to sign me up for a long time, so as soon as she got the opportunity she put my name on the list,” the 18-year-old said.

Savannah worked with the programme for four years, receiving the Penny Ray Achievement Award last year and becoming head candy striper.

She told The Royal Gazette that the programme inspired her to become more mature and empathetic, as well as solidify her plans for the future.

“There’s a lot of things you have to consent to before you go into the programme, because you’re working in a hospital. There’s a lot of things that people who don’t work in the hospital wouldn’t necessarily see and a lot of things that people don’t want to talk about and stuff like that.

“And so I feel like the thing that I took away from it was maturing and learning to keep things to myself, and learning to be sensitive to people’s situations.”

Because of her time candy striping, Savannah will attend Ryerson University in Ontario, Canada during the fall to study sociology. She hopes to one day specialise in child and adolescent therapy and counselling.

For more information on the Candy Striping Programme or to register your child, visit www.bermudahospitals.bm or e-mail nancy.oughton@bhb.bm