Scholarship to support students' mental health awarded to first medical student

The Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University, Professor Martin Repko, presented the Martin Lenda Scholarship for the first time. The sum of 20 thousand Norwegian crowns - more than 40 thousand Czech crowns - is a contribution from the Norwegian Martin Lenda Foundation intended for the Norwegian student who will do best in the admission procedure at our faculty. The first successful recipient of the scholarship was Asad Sabarai from the town of Moss in the south-east of Norway, entering the first year of the General Medicine programme.

"The primary goal of the foundation is to support the mental health of students. And since the Lenda family has roots in Brno, it was natural to support the awarding of scholarships for medical studies at Masaryk University as well," says Jan Zima, executive director of Interstudium, an agency that facilitates foreign studies in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for Norwegian students, and chairman of the board of the Martin Lenda Foundation based in Oslo.

The scholarship will be awarded annually to the Norwegian student who applies to study at our Faculty of Medicine through Interstudium and who achieves the highest score in the admission procedure. "The Martin Lenda Scholarship is intended to motivate future Norwegian students to prepare as well as possible for the entrance exam and future studies. As future doctors, it is also intended to arouse in them an interest in the mental health of patients. At the same time, there is the assumption that the scholarship will be a motivator for the student to choose to study in Brno if he or she applies to study at several faculties," adds Jan Zima.

The founder of the Martin Lenda Foundation is his mother, Jitka Lenda, who, after the death of her son, a law student, established the foundation with a fortune of CZK 5 million.