Out of 8,000 worldwide candidates, solely 95 folks had been chosen to obtain the 2025 Gates Cambridge Scholarship and a Filipino worldwide scholar in Toronto, Niño Jan Pol Dosdos, is amongst them.
“I’m nonetheless absorbing the information,” Dosdos says. “For one, I’m the primary within the household to earn a college diploma and now a Gates Cambridge Scholar.”
The complete scholarship on the College of Cambridge Graduate Research will assist fund Dosdos’ grasp’s diploma in Philosophy and Anthropological Analysis. It’s a nine-month program that might have value him virtually £55,000 or near CAD 100,000.
“In my Gates Cambridge interview, they requested me what was one thing distinctive about me, and I instructed them, my work in the neighborhood preceded my educational pursuits,” Dosdos says.
Niño Jan Pol Dosdos is seen doing cultural work within the Phillippines on this undated picture. (Submitted Picture)
The scholarship, recognized to have an acceptance charge of about one per cent, is given to people assembly the standards of getting excellent mental talents, management potential, and being dedicated to utilizing their academic attainment to contribute positively to society and the world.
Dosdos, who spent years as a scholar and youth chief within the Philippines earlier than migrating to Canada as a global scholar in 2021, has been actively partaking with Indigenous communities in his hometown of Zamboanga del Sur and in rural communities.
“Working in tasks reminiscent of catastrophe response, psychological well being… that impressed me to do anthropology as a result of anthropology is all about finding out what it means to be human, what variations imply, and the way we will make the world safer for human variations,” he says.
Dosdos says he initially had no plans to pursue graduate research after not too long ago graduating from the College of Toronto as a scholar with a double main in Anthropology and Public Coverage.
Niño Jan Pol Dosdos is seen on this picture graduating from the College of Toronto in 2025. (Submitted Picture)
In contrast to the standard worldwide scholar pathway in Canada, he says changing into a everlasting resident within the nation isn’t a precedence, particularly since he’s planning to pursue a profession in academia.
“I’ve to simply accept the truth that I cannot be positioned in the identical place ceaselessly,” he says.
Dosdos is the sixth Filipino to obtain the Gates scholarship since its inception in 2000, and the one Filipino recipient this 12 months. He’s set to begin his program in England in October.
