Five high-school student-athletes are breathing easier after receiving scholarship grants and gifts courtesy of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s Pocket Rocket Foundation and her sponsors at the Wolmer’s Girls auditorium on Friday.

The 2021 recipients include Tafada Wright of St Jago High School, Kimesha Beckford of Manchester High School, Anecia Taylor of Holmwood Technical High School, Olivia Petrekin of St Andrew High School and Malachi King of Wolmer’s Boys’ School.

In addition to the money, each student was presented with a grocery basket from GraceKennedy. Each also received a Hi-Lo Supermarket voucher valued at J$10,000, a Sangster’s Book Store voucher valued at J$10,000 as well as J$1,500 phone credit, all courtesy of Digicel.

The five awardees bring to 55 the number of student-athletes – 29 girls and 26 boys – from 22 high schools and competing in 11 different sports, who have benefitted from academic scholarships from the foundation since its inception.

Under the scholarship programme, student-athletes from second to fifth form receive J$50,000 while sixth-form students get J$60,000.

The Pocket Rocket Foundation was launched in late 2012 at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in St Andrew and the first seven scholarship grants were awarded in 2013.

Born into humble circumstances in the under-served community of Waterhouse in Kingston, Fraser-Pryce, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and four-time World 100m champion, has always had a desire to help less fortunate children, especially since she was also a beneficiary of someone who believed in her.

“My dream and my passion has always been to help children. That’s why I got my degree in Child and Adolescent Development,” she says on the foundation’s website.

“When I started high school in 1999 at Wolmer’s Girls, I was privileged and blessed at the same time to have met a woman by the name of Jeanne Coke of the Wolmer’s Old Girls’ Association. She saw something in me that I didn’t see at all, and started to fund my education, my books, my uniform, my lunch and everything. She showed me compassion and love in so many ways. And that’s where everything fueled from.

“When a stranger believes in you and supports you wholeheartedly, you start believing in yourself too. The fact that she had done that for me made me obligated to make sure I did the same thing for other student-athletes who are coming from an impoverished situation. They are here, and a lot of their parents can’t afford to send them to school, so that they could become better individuals.”