Diversity drives the engine of the Scholarship.
Only 4.7% of airline pilots are women.
Only 7% of airline pilots are not white.
That really sucks!
My Flight Logbook tells me I have 25,000 hours of flight time. That’s thousands of flights over my career. However, less than one page in my logbook would be flights where my fellow tech crew were either women, people of non-European ethnicity or from backgrounds where resources are few and far between.
Considering the job is well paid and offers enormous opportunities, it was clear to me that a huge group of eager young people wishing to share the skies are not able to get a foot on the very long ladder to the top of the clouds.
Their dreams are being extinguished before they ever have a real chance to start following them. With no role models to inspire them, little in the way of resources to draw on and a clear lack of encouragement from those who could help, they’ve dismissed the idea of being a pilot as something simply not possible for them.
We live in New Zealand, a country long known as a place where everyone has a fair go. I think we can all agree that ideal has been eroded quite substantially in latter decades. I grew increasingly uncomfortable with this and wanted to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Which is why my partner and I have created the two flying scholarships.
I can’t help every single student pilot from underrepresented demographics, but I can sure try – one scholarship at a time.
“We all want something to offer. This is how we belong. It’s how we feel included. So, if we want to include everyone, we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That’s what inclusion means - everyone is a contributor.”
