A Community Makes All the Difference
By Ján Michalko, PhD This guest blog was written by our Senior Project Ján for Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) in August 2020 at the launch of its African Scholarship Hub. Ján reflects on his doctoral fieldwork with university students in South Africa. He highlights the benefits of alumni networks for young women and men, who receive scholarships for their higher education. It was late 2016 and the calls for university fees ‘to fall’ in South Africa were entering their new peek. University students were once again organising marches and class disruptions. They were building on the discussions and changes they instigated with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign the previous year. Their goal was to shine light on the challenges that many young South Africans, especially racialized as Black/ African, faced in their quest to getting quality education, especially on tertiary levels. One of them was financial exclusion, which persisted despite the provision of national financial assistance and various bursary and scholarship schemes. …
South African Youth Organisations Establish Community of Practice
First Global has helped establish a community of practice on alumni engagement in South Africa. Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation hosted a workshop for organisations that provide scholarships for young South Africans and run programmes supporting their education, entrepreneurship and employment. Participating organisations recognised that despite the support of their programming, young people, especially those who are marginalized by their economic status and race, still face immense challenges after they graduate. So the question of how to continue support for programme alumni in a sustainable and impactful way became one of the key issues discussed at the meeting. Future First Global facilitators, …
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