Ghodrati Foundation offers 126 scholarships
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Tuesday December 19, 2017 16:19
When addressing the media during the Ghodrati Foundation Scholarship For New Era College 2018, the foundation trustee Daruosh Ghodrati said the special initiative was aimed at educating and empowering Batswana in acquiring engineering and business qualification.
“The scholarship also aims at responding to government’s call for the private sector to actively participate in the socio-economic development of Botswana through a cost-sharing approach,” he said. Ghodrati explained that their objective was to assist the youth from low-income families to attain skills centred on engineering and business qualifications.
It also intends to afford youth who discontinued from tertiary education a second chance to attain qualifications, assist youth with 30 to 35 points (with credit in English, Mathematics and Sciences) attain qualifications up to level five.
It will also support corporate organisations in staff development initiatives.
He further explained that they targeted BGCSE completers with good credits in the mentioned subjects who have not been able to access tertiary education since August 2014. BGCSE completers who are high flyers (36 to 48 points) but dropped from tertiary education due to different circumstances will also be given a second chance. For his part, New Era College registrar, Phillip Tsumake welcomed the initiative saying that it came at the right time when the Ministry of Basic Education called on the private corporate world to join hands with the government and help boost the society’s education.
He added that they target mature entry students or technicians aged between 21 to 40 years who want to advance their engineering careers to higher qualifications.
“We also invite self-employed students or technicians (21 to 40 years) who want to advance their qualifications to the next level on part time basis. One of the groups we are targeting includes physically challenged, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) students with good credit in English, Mathematics, Sciences subjects who wish to pursue engineering or business qualification from levels five to seven,” he announced. The scholarship will be targeting six levels of education where each group will be offered 20 scholarships.
“We have identified six centres across the country where interested parties can pick and drop application forms. These are Palapye, Francistown, Maun, Gantsi, Kanye and Molepolole. I hope that our youth will take advantage of this opportunity,” he said. The Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology Dr Alfred Madigele urged other private sectors to follow Ghodrati’s footsteps saying that the government alone could not afford to sponsor the youth for tertiary education. He pointed out that there were over 36,000 young people awaiting sponsorship each year and the government can only afford to sponsor 10,000 of them.