7 June, 2016

2016 Freddy Fricke Scholarship recipient Maddison Smart

It wasn’t until high school that nursing student Maddison Smart really began to understand what “The Gap” was all about.

Gumbaynggirr woman Maddison has lived in Bowraville all her life, and was shocked to realise that her community’s health, educational and economic disparities were common ones.

The young woman resolved to do what she could to make a difference, and decided to study nursing.

Maddison Smart is now in her second year of study at the University of New England in Armidale.

It is a gruelling course, with practical and volunteer work and real life simulations as well as the traditional lectures, essays and exams. 

And she is one of the 2016 recipients of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council’s annual Freddy Fricke Scholarship, open to young LALC members studying, or wishing to study, at university.

OurMob visited Maddison at the University of New England on Anaiwan country recently, to see how her studies are progressing.

She feels very strongly about the reasons why she wants to become a nurse.