One of this year’s recipients of a Chevening Scholarship is Venice Irving, from Kingston, Jamaica. Chevening is the UK Government’s international scholarships and fellowships programme funded by the Funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and partner organisations.
Venice spent eight years in Taiwan teaching English to speakers of other languages, before returning to Jamaica and getting a post-graduate degree in education at the University of the West Indies. She then taught business courses and worked as a course facilitator at the University of the West Indies Open Campus. However, it was her stint teaching abroad that led her to launching a business in 2009 to advise teachers interested in teaching abroad. She later renamed the business Happy Teachers, and focused on looking after teachers’ mental and physical health. Two years ago she started yet another company, the Caribbean TESOL Institute, offering a variety of English as a foreign language certificates, as well as some local teaching certificates. The businesses have been honoured with a number of awards, including the US Embassy’s Academy Women of Entrepreneurs and the Caribbean MicroPitch Business Plan competition.
And now Venice has been awarded a prestigious Chevening scholarship to study teaching English to speakers of other languages at the University of Manchester in the UK.
“This scholarship is particularly significant, because I will be studying my area of expertise. This degree will equip me to train cohorts of Jamaican teachers in TESOL to give our government a bargaining chip at the investment table with countries that speak other languages,” she told loopnews.com.
