NSB holds grand Hapan Scholarship 2012 awards ceremony

The annual Hapan Scholarship Awards Ceremony 2012 was held recently on a grand scale at Temple Trees and students throughout the island who excelled at the Year 5 scholarship examination of 2012 were felicitated and facilitated at this function.

The salient feature of this year’s function was the distinguished participation of First Lady Shiranthi Wickramasinghe Rajapaksa, as the Chief Guest.

The First Lady stressed that the time had come for elders to think and act more wisely for the sake of the children as well as society, in order to protect the world of children who are waiting to take over the future of our country.

At this annually organised function, the children among the first 15 students who had scored the highest marks islandwide including both Sinhala and Tamil mediums and holding Hapan Post Office, NRFC and Smile accounts of NSB, were awarded scholarships and felicitated.

This year, 183 children, covering all 25 districts of the country including the North and East Provinces received scholarships.

NSB offers scholarships worth Rs. 50,000, Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 20 000 each respectively to the children who score highest marks at national level. The bank also offers Rs. 10,000 each to the rest of the children as well.

At the same time, each child was awarded with a valuable certificate, a medal, a school bag and gifts. It is also worthy to note that the NSB felicitates every student who has got through the scholarship examination on branch level too.

Medals and prizes of NSB were also awarded this time to the 27 students who won the Golden, Silver and Bronze medals in the Mathematics and Science Olympiad competition held at Calcutta, India recently.

This was the first time that Sri Lanka obtained a Gold Medal at an International Science and Maths Olympiad.

Minister of Education Bandula Gunawardana, Deputy Minister Gitanjana Gunawardana, NSB Chairman Sunil S. Sirisena, Working Director Sumanadasa Abegunawardhana, Director Lionel P. Fernando, GM/CEO of NSB H. M. Hennayake Bandara participated as special guests and the higher management of the bank, top officials from the Ministry of Education, the recipient children and their parents and altogether around 1,000 invitees participated in the function.

NSB, under its Corporate Social Responsibility Program for the children of the country, has awarded these scholarships annually since 2003 and it also organises a series of scholarship seminars islandwide each year.

The children who open accounts before the date of the scholarship exam of next year are also entitled to apply for this scholarship. These accounts could be easily opened from any NSB branch or post office.