A scholarship for $6000 will help Beechworth’s Tahji Browne on her pathway to a medical career.

Tahji is one of five young locals to receive financial assistance from the Community Bank Beechworth and District (Bendigo Bank) as she embarks this year on her studies at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne.

Tahji said the scholarship means taking the stress off the need to work to cover rent, university bills as well as general living expenses.

“It will help me to focus on my studies a lot more which will allow me to excel and do better,” she said.

Tahji will be studying a biomedical science degree as a pathway degree to a Doctor of Medicine with an end goal to become a paediatric cardiologist.

“It’s a long journey of around 15 years with the scholarship giving me a boost with a head start,” she said.

For Beechworth’s Felix Woodford, the scholarship will help cover costs while studying Bachelor of Arts (Music Industry).

“The course needs a lot of tech and software that needs to be purchased, and the scholarship is going to help me a lot with that,” he said.

“I'm also renting in Carlton while I study at RMIT in the inner city of Melbourne and will help with rent too as it’s expensive in Melbourne.”

Felix said his end career goal is sound engineering in media, film and music.

“It will be anything I can get my hands on to start with but will channel towards music at the end of the day.”

“The bank helping us is awesome as we're in a rural part of Victoria and it helps set up a lot of people for success.

Bank Board chair Ben Merritt said the scholarship is one of many opportunities the community bank can support.

“We're lucky this year that we had 10 great applicants for university including one for TAFE, and we've been able to fund five of those students this year.

Mr Merrit said students could apply from anywhere within the Indigo Shire who attended shire schools.

“It was extremely hard this year to select from 10 extremely eligible candidates to the five selected,” he said.

“This will be our eighth year of funding, and it's grown from one student a year for four at university and one at TAFE.”

Among other students awarded scholarships were Poppy Voigt studying the Bachelor of Human Resource Management (Psychology) and Kai Schlup-Carson studying Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) both at Deakin University.

Tyron Hoogenraad will be studying a Certificate IV in Photography and Digital Imaging at RMIT.

The Community Bank Beechworth & District assists academically motivated students aged between 16-25 years of age, facing challenging circumstances, making it difficult to undertake further education.

The scholarship program has invested more than $80,000 to help 15 local students since it began six years agso.

This year $25,000 was awarded to recipients with four scholarships to study university at $6000 each with $3000 each year over two years while one $2000 TAFE scholarship was awarded at $1000 per year over two years.

The scholarship program supports the full-time or part-time study related expenses including – accommodation costs, course costs, study-related materials/equipment, textbooks, tutoring and /or education related travel (within Australia).

Applicants demonstrated good leadership both within, and outside their school community.