Alice O’Sullivan Benevolent Fund

Alice O’Sullivan has a unique combination of significant physical and sensory disabilities, including Cerebral Palsy and Cerebral Visual Impairment. She also has excellent communication skills, is personable, highly intelligent, and motivated, and has already shown that she means business when she talks about helping others. 

Her goal was to study Jurisprudence at University of Oxford and at the University of Panthéon-Assas, to obtain both a Common Law and a Civil Law degree so she can work across several jurisdictions to contribute to the improvement of Human Rights of People with Disability.

Her mother approached us several years ago when Alice was in Year 9 to seek financial assistance to help her realise this dream. We set up a benevolent fund to help raise funds for Alice. A total of $27,550 has been raised. Now that she is nearly finished with Year 12, her mother has written to us with an update, and a request to release the funds raised for her.

Alice is nearly finished Year 12.  She had interviews for Oxford and in the end, was not selected. We were all disappointed for her and she was devastated.  She got into all the other UK Unis she nominated including Kings College London to do Politics, Philosophy and Law and University of Kent Canterbury to do Law with French law including a year at Aix Marseille Université and also University of Buckingham to do a 2 year fast track Law degree.

She also was offered places in several top Australian Universities.  Her predicted International Baccalaureate score of 42 is equivalent to an ATAR of 99.3, so is exceptionally good.  She may be Dux of her year group, but we won’t know for sure until after final exams in May.  She is still amazing in every way.  She is still training in swimming with a goal to one day be a Paralympian.  She was given a special offer from Australian National University to join their Law faculty mid year at the end of July.  This is extraordinary as they only take new students at the beginning of the year.  She would also like to continue her swimming training with them at their new facility, or train with AIS in Canberra.

Due to the War in Europe, Covid and opportunities here in Australia, notwithstanding being closer to family on the east coast, Alice has chosen to stay in Australia for now and accept the ANU offer.  Alice and I will be moving to Canberra in June/July.  Peter and I are currently looking at the realestate market and have put an offer on a suitable property. Any property we live in will require some modification for Alice including an accessible bathroom.  Peter will need to stay in Perth to work and intends to wind down his business in around 4-5 years.  He will visit us whenever he can (often we hope) and will help with our move.

Therefore, I would like to ask that Alice’s benevolent Fund monies be released to assist us with anticipated home modifications, our move to Canberra and as a reserve for Assistive technologies she may need in her new studies please.  

Comments are closed.