The Pat Farry Rural Health Education Trust aims to raise awareness of two significant scholarships, providing a total of $30,000, to encourage research and professional development involving medical students and rural health professionals.
Scholarships offered by the trust helped young people to spend ''valuable time in innovative and challenging overseas situations'' and later to become ''the new generation of idea generators'' in this country, trust chairman John Farry said.
The annual Pat Farry Rural Health Education Trust Travelling Scholarship provides up to $10,000 - which may be divided between two recipients - to University of Otago medical students to travel overseas to a rural situation.
There they observed new concepts, developed their skills and shared their learning with other students when they returned, organisers said.
These travelling scholarships are awarded to Otago medical students in their sixth year, preference being given to students participating in the university's rural medical immersion programme.
This programme was developed by the late Dr Farry, a Queenstown GP and medical educationist, in 2007. He was a tireless advocate and champion of rural health until his death in 2009.
Dr Farry was also the founding director of Otago University's Te Waipounamu rural health unit for the education of rural doctors, situated in the department of general practice and rural health at the Dunedin School of Medicine.
The trust is also seeking to raise raise awareness of the Pat Farry Trust Scholarship, and early next year plans to make the first award of this $20,000 scholarship.
Believed to be the biggest of its kind in this country, this scholarship is awarded every two years, to a rural health professional in the early stages of their career.
Trust project manager Simone Flight said the funding would enable the professional to travel abroad and gain skills that could improve rural health in this country.
When the $20,000 was first offered in 2011, there were no suitable applications and no award was made. The scholarship's first recipient will be announced at the New Zealand Rural General Practice Network's annual conference, in Wellington next year.
Applications opened this week for the undergraduate scholarship and will open for the trust scholarship on September 2.
Organisers said application forms could be downloaded at http://www.patfarrytrust.co.nz/scholarships/.
