Equity begins selection for 'Wings to Fly' scholarships

 Equity Group Foundation (EGF) has started the selection process for the 2015 Wings to Fly scholarship programme. Equity Group Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation with support from KfW will this year offer 2,000 Wings To Fly comprehensive secondary school scholarships to financially constrained children who excelled in the 2014 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, whose results were released on December 29, 2014.

This will be the sixth class to benefit from the scholarship programme run by the Equity Group Foundation, enabling the program to meet its goal of 10,000 beneficiaries before the target date of 2015. The pupils will be picked from every district or sub-county where Equity Bank has a branch.

The minimum marks for eligibility for candidates are 350 except for the few districts where the selection board may lower the cut off points as guided by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) if it is established that the KCPE standards were low.

“This is part of our secondary school comprehensive scholarship initiative which targets to assist 10,000 deserving students by the year 2015,” Equity Group CEO and EGF’s Executive Chairman Dr James Mwangi said. “We have reached that milestone with these 2,000 scholarships ahead of our target date and want to thank our partners, The MasterCard Foundation, USAID, KfW and UKAID for their support. We urge Kenyans to share the message about the scholarships so that many deserving children can apply for the scholarships.”

Dr Mwangi urged prospective candidates to present themselves to the nearest Equity Bank Branch or Equity Agent with their KCPE result slips and a letter of introduction from their respective head teachers confirming their results to be issued with the scholarship application forms.

“This will give them ample time to meet the January 5th deadline. We are expecting to receive a big number of submissions, given the numbers of applications we have received in the previous years,” he said. Shortlisted pupils will be invited for interviews which will be conducted by the Equity Group Foundation District Scholarship Selection Board (DSSB).

The DSSB comprises of relevant key personalities in the district and is chaired by the District/County Education Officer (DEO) and coordinated by Equity Branch Manager.

SOURCE; Business Daily, 5th January