Rob Townshend

Claire Townshend Bursary Trust

Claire Townshend was a lovely, fun loving girl who was brought up in the Randburg area. After matriculating at Hyde Park High school she enrolled at Rhodes University, Grahamstown for a BSc Biochemistry degree. She soon made her mark in her residence as a popular, caring girl.

She loved her university and her course. The course is extremely hard and requires long hours of study. Claire was a dedicated and conscientious student who spent many hours studying whilst others could go out socialising. She was average in her results but she was disciplined and hard working and was known to spend time helping her fellow students who were struggling. In particular, she spent much time with a Zimbabwean girl who was struggling both academically and financially. She had a great concern to help people less privileged that herself. She also had a great sense of humour and it was her aim to bio-genetically create a square water melon to prevent it tolling off the table when you cut it.

She reached her final year with much hard work, but also with a lot of social fun with her friends. She was nearing the end of her final year mid term exams, with only one exam to go, when on the evening of the 14th June 2003, she unfortunately died in a car accident, not far from her digs. The university fraternity was numbed by her death. Her lecturer in Bio Chemistry told us that she was the "glue" that kept the class together and that her death had a profound effect on her friends and fellow students in the faculty.

In order for her memory to live on and to preserve the values she epitomized, a bursary trust fund has been set up under the auspices of Rhodes University to assist future Biochemistry students. A grant is given from the trust fund to a student who is in second or final year of Biochemistry and has therefore demonstrated their ability and determination to work hard; is financially struggling or from a disadvantaged background; is approved of by the university based on their student records.

There have been two beneficiaries thus far. The fund is fairly modest at present and the grant given each year not considerable, but nevertheless a great help where there isn't much financial assistance available. We would like to grow the fund so that it becomes self sustaining as well as give more substantial grants to deserving students.

Biochemistry is a difficult course and few graduate with this qualification. The country is sorely in need of these skills in the fields of food production, medicine and industry.