American Caribbean Maritime Foundation establishes digital portal for scholarships
Published:Thursday | April 4, 2024 | 12:10 AMLester Hinds/Gleaner Writer
The American Caribbean Maritime Foundation has established a digital portal through which students wishing to access the foundation’s scholarships and grants can now apply.
The foundation has taken its scholarship and grant application digital with an easy-to-use platform: https://apply.acmfdn.org/.
Students in Jamaica wishing to pursue a career in maritime are urged to apply for the grants and scholarships. The application process will close on April 30, 2024.
The foundation gives grants of about US$1,000 and scholarships range from US$10,000 to US$25,000, depending of the circumstances.
The grants and scholarships are open to students in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and The Bahamas.
The American Caribbean Maritime Foundation (ACMF) has funded full tuition and grants for approximately 200 scholars and grantees in nine Caribbean countries, namely, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Suriname, St Lucia, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Guyana.
The site accepts applications from high-school and tertiary-level students from across the Caribbean, opened from January 1, with a deadline of April 30 for all applications to be submitted.
“I think students will find the portal easy to use, and the platform makes the application more accessible to students across the Caribbean,” said Dr Geneive Brown Metzger, president of the ACMF and former Jamaican consul general to New York.
World-class talent
With the shipping industry beginning to look at non-traditional sources for talent, the Caribbean is starting to take its place among the United States, China, and the Philippines as a rich source of world-class talent for the cruise, cargo, and the oil and gas sectors, including onshore and offshore.
“Our focus is on professional positions,” said Juan Carlos Croston, vice-president for marketing and corporate affairs at Manzanillo International Terminal – Panama, who also serves as chair of the ACMF Scholarship Committee.
Croston continued: “ACMF scholars have demonstrated their talent and the world-class training they receive at our academic partners.”
The Caribbean is competitive in quality of training, diversity of skill sets, and geographic proximity for all workers in the industry. Jamaica alone churns out hundreds of officer-level talent annually, many with a bachelor’s in navigation and engineering. Additionally, the country potentially generates STCW-qualified and ratings candidates in the thousands.
The ACMF is a US non-profit tax-exempt organisation and is the only entity solely dedicated to sponsoring academic scholarships and grants to aspiring Caribbean and CARICOM maritime professionals and seafarers.
The foundation partners with five academic institutions within CARICOM - the Caribbean Maritime University in Jamaica; LJM Maritime Academy in The Bahamas; MatPal Marine Institute and Atlantic Alliance Maritime and Off-Shore Training Institute, both in Guyana; and the University of Trinidad and Tobago.
Its scholars and grantees hail from Jamaica, Guyana, The Bahamas, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Grenada. The ACMF has donated dozens of laptops to help students study remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic; funded emergency grants to students at risk of dropping out due to loss of family income during the pandemic; and created an online jobs board, www.acmf-carex.com.
The ACMF also hosts an annual Caribbean-wide webinar, the Maritime Link-Up Webinar, in partnership with CARICOM, attended by hundreds of students to promote maritime careers.
Under the leadership of Rick Murrell, president and CEO of Saltchuk, the ACMF’s sea-time initiative for cadets identifies and funds internship opportunities on vessels to enable cadets to achieve the last bit of training necessary before they can take up permanent jobs at sea.
The ACMF Anchor Awards, held annually, celebrates the leadership of the shipping industry stalwarts.