By Jim McKeown | Managing Director
Our Girls Scholarship Fund is off to a great start in 2021. Our high school team has already visited 40 high schools, speaking to Grade 12 classes about the year ahead and what it will take to make it to university. During that process, we identify every single learner that, based on their academic results, could qualify to go to university. We then buy study guides, develop customised study packs of old exams and memos and prepare student profiles to enable us to help apply to universities and bursaries across the country on their behalf.
This year we have appointed a full-time staff member to look after our rural area high schools as we deepen our work in those communities and expand assistance outside of the city. Needless to say, the need is often much greater in these schools. We have already compiled a database with over 292 Grade 12 learners that could potentially attend university in 2022 and will be working tirelessly to help them get there.
On the university front, our team has been working overtime to help students get registered for studies this year. With the academic year postponed due to covid and many courses being transitioned to online learning, the process is confusing for many students. We began by hosting orientations in town for two cohorts of students: 1. Those traveling to other cities and 2. Those studying locally at Nelson Mandela University. Both groups were introduced to their student mentors, provided stipends to help get their year started and given guidance about how to travel, how to find accommodation and how to get registered.
It is a particularly intimidating process for our 1st years traveling to other cities, many for the first time in their lives. Having our student mentors at their side and being introduced to other students attending the same institutions makes a huge difference. Many are also comforted by the fact that senior Masi students are on their respective campuses and always available to help.
Locally, we have identified many of our most impoverished students - those who live 10 to a home, those in wooden shacks, those who are orphaned - and moved them into our Masi Houses of Excellence. Each of these students will be provided with a safe, inspiring and supportive environment from which to concentrate on their studies.
Together, we are creating a generation of female graduates empowered to uplift their own families, solve their own community’s problems and serve as role models to other children.
Thank you for making this all possible.
Sincerely,
Jim
P.S. Please check out our Q1 Project Report attached. A frinedly reminder that this GlobalGiving project only supports the females on the project :)
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By Jim McKeown | Managing Director
By Jim McKeown | Managing Director
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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