By all reasonable measurements the Scholarship program has been a great success achieving recognition from across the country as a program that rewards excellence and encourages students interested in a career in agriculture to pursue their dreams by undertaking further education.

The scholarship recipients that have completed their studies have also achieved commendable success across their chosen field of endeavours. Many have gone on to be important contributors to agriculture and rural communities as they initially planned to do while others still remain passionately committed to agriculture despite having pursued different career paths to those originally planned.

The objective of the Scholarship program has always been to foster excellence in agriculture and to encourage the best young minds in Victorian agriculture to pursue further education and development. To this end the program to date has cultivated 100 exceptionally talented and progressive individuals. Collectively the group represents an amazing resource of accumulated knowledge and experience.

Against this background the concept of creating an ongoing association of scholarship recipients arose. Our ambition for the association is to facilitate knowledge sharing amongst the group and be a source of further development for its members. It was also perceived that the group would prove to be an invaluable resource to the agricultural industry and rural communities.

In November 2004 the Rural Finance Scholarship Alumni was created, the first step being the approval of the Alumni Constitution by the Rural Finance Board of Management. Subsequent to this the foundation of the Alumni was further cemented with the inaugural meeting of members in May 2005 and the election of the Committee, comprising President, Treasurer, Secretary and members.

The Alumni is in its very early stages of development. Our hopes for its success are high. However the success of the program is very much in the hands of the members for without their equal contribution the association cannot hope to achieve all that is possible. Rural Finance will continue to provide ongoing financial and administrative support to the Alumni and will always stand ready to assist the organisation in any reasonable way.   

We wish the members of the alumni every success for the future of the program and encourage one and all to actively be involved in the development of its program and functions.
 

Members
All current and past Rural Finance Scholarship recipients are invited to become members of the Rural Finance Scholarship Alumni. Every endeavour has been made to contact all past recipients and invite their participation however it has not been possible to establish contact with all of these. Any past recipients that are not currently members are welcome to contact the executive of the Alumni to enquire about membership details or alternatively they may contact Rural Finance directly.

Committee
The elected committee of the Rural Finance Scholarship Alumni is as follows;

President:  Mr Wayne Firth
Members:  Ms Kate Webb, Ms Amanda Waller, Ms Prue Addlem and Mr Peter Nee (Rural Finance representative)

Contacts
Mr Wayne Firth
President
Rural Finance Scholarship Alumni
waynef@yaranipro.com.au

Mr Peter Nee
General Manager Business and People Development
Rural Finance
peter.nee@ruralfinance.com.au
03 5448 2608