Tag: Mastercard Foundation

Fellowship opportunity empowers thousands of African students to start/continue scalable businesses

The Mastercard Foundation and the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre (DDQIC) have announced a partnership offering free virtual entrepreneurship training, and an opportunity to receive startup funding to more than 1,000 students through the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship for African Students at Queen’s University.

The program launched in September 2020. It provides students and recent graduates from African universities within the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program with the opportunity to apply to a free virtual entrepreneurship training program delivered by Queen’s University’s DDQIC Program. Through this program, award-winning faculty and some of the best innovators, policymakers, and business strategists collaborate to support students to become Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellows. During the 2020-2021 Academic year, 1,252 students participated, and more than 60 percent of the cohort were women, recognizing the additional barriers women face when starting a business or seeking employment in Africa.

“The launch of the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship for African Students last year was a proud moment,” said Jim Leech. “Seeing bright African students take advantage of this entrepreneurial training to initiate, strengthen, and bring their business goals to life is exciting and augurs well for Africa’s future. I look forward to seeing the new waves of talent come in with this year’s applicants.”

Prospective fellows receive access to a curated list of online entrepreneurship courses developed at DDQIC and work through the Disciplined Entrepreneurship Framework developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The fellowship is designed to address unemployment among post-secondary graduates by equipping thousands of students and recent graduates with sufficient entrepreneurial training to initiate and continue to grow their businesses.

Titose Chembezi of the University of Cape Town was a $5,000 winner at the DDQIC Summer Pitch Competition and said the pitch experience provided her with a boost of confidence. “It was the first time my team and I got to compete with ventures from Canada and won a prize. It taught me to move past the stigma that startups from the African continent may not be competent enough compared to the West and it also gave me the courage to see the world as my oasis.”

The Mastercard Foundation created these fellowships through an endowed donation to Queen’s University in honour of Jim Leech, former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Mastercard Foundation and Chancellor Emeritus of Queen’s University (14th Chancellor). In 2014, Mr. Leech was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions as an innovator in pension management, for his writings about retirement funding, and for his community involvement.

The applications for the upcoming academic year close on December 10, 2021. Learn more about the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship and complete your application today.

For application inquiries, please contact:

Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre
Megan Sieroka
Program Coordinator at the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship for African Students: jimleechfellowship@queensu.ca

www.mastercardfdn.org

Mastercard Foundation and Light For The World Launch online platform for persons with disabilities

Light for the World Uganda, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, launched an online platform, Cap-Able, which will enable higher education institutions, primarily Scholars Program Partner Universities, to become more disability inclusive.

Cap-Able is a digital toolkit designed to equip administrators, lecturers, and management with the information, knowledge, and tools to create more inclusive learning institutions. The toolkit offers best practices for higher education institutions to improve enrollment and learning practices, create inclusive learning environments, and help young people effectively transition to the world of work. It is a one-stop-shop for educational material on disability inclusion in higher education.

“We need to come together and explore every avenue to facilitate access to education for people with disabilities,” said Musa Mwambu, a Disability Inclusion Advisor at Light for the World Uganda. “Through strong partnerships like the one between Light for the World and the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, we can swiftly deploy innovative, scalable solutions for students and educators. The accessibility nature of Cap-Able is a powerful reminder of what we can achieve together as we bridge the education gap for people with disabilities.”

Cap-Able will provide key resources to Scholars Program partners, educators, and students on understanding disability and inclusion, detailed information on different types of disabilities and inclusion needs, practical guidance on disability inclusion throughout the different phases of the university experience, as well as a range of educational materials, quizzes, and games. The platform also provides an opportunity for users to share their experiences and other best practices on disability inclusion.

Creating prosperity across the continent requires leaders of all backgrounds and experiences who will work to ensure that emerging economic and social benefits are available to all. Equity and inclusion are central to the realization of the Mastercard Foundation’s vision and mission. It is reflected in the Foundation’s strategy, Young Africa Works, which has set out to enable 30 million youth, particularly women, to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.

“The Scholars Program seeks to inspire an inclusive approach in which all young people, no matter their starting point in life, have an equal opportunity to succeed,” said Andre Okunzuwa, Program Partner, Mastercard Foundation. “By leveraging technology, our hope is that Cap-Able will contribute to ensuring equitable access for all young people, including those underrepresented in higher education by supporting institutions to access the knowledge needed to put disability inclusion into action.”

The Cap-Able website has been designed to ensure a user-friendly experience with robust navigation and functionality features. Created with the user experience in mind, the website includes an accessibility menu that will ensure users are able to customize anything and control everything based on their unique accessibility needs — preferred button types, language and locales, size, position, colour, and more.

Cap-Able, while designed to support partners of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, can also be useful to other institutions, staff, and students who are interested in taking on a more active role in creating an enabling environment for people with disabilities. 

www.mastercardfdn.org

Mastercard foundation, USIU-Africa, and ASU partner to strengthen e-learning capacity in Africa

The Mastercard Foundation, United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), and Arizona State University (ASU) announced the launch of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program e-Learning Initiative, which over the next five years, will enable more than 600,000 university students to successfully pursue their studies online, from anywhere across Africa.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many universities, including those within the Scholars Program network, to suspend face-to-face classes and pivot to online learning. Building on what was learned during the disruption, this initiative will increase the investments that have already been made and strengthen the existing capacity of university partners to deliver high-quality, relevant, and inclusive e-learning courses. It will increase the number of young people accessing tertiary level education, particularly those living with disabilities, young women, refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and those living in rural areas. More than that, it will contribute to an e-learning community of practice in Africa, and beyond, that will enable collaborative learning and sharing of best practices and resources.

“This agreement will bolster our e-learning capacity-building alongside 10 other participating international universities and strengthen the Scholars Program partner universities to deliver high-quality and inclusive online instruction and provide virtual support to all students,” said Professor Freida Brown, Interim Vice Chancellor, USIU-Africa. “It will also support the development of a community of practice in e-learning.”

During the first phase of the program (2020 to 2022), 135 faculty and staff from across 10 partner institutions will be trained to design and deliver online courses, and an estimated 95,000 students will access online learning. In the second phase (2022 to 2025), the number of online learners will grow to more than 600,000 and the initiative will be scaled to include new partners and institutions that are not currently part of the Scholars Program network.

Arizona State University (ASU), a leader in the space of e-learning, will serve as Lead Trainer, providing foundational training to the faculty and staff and conducting a series of tiered leadership roundtables and learning sessions. As the Network Facilitator, USIU-Africa, which was one of the first institutions in East Africa to successfully transition 90 percent of its programming online, will contextualize the content for an African setting and facilitate engagement and learning across the network. The Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning will play a key role, hosting a shared Content Management System that will curate content from participating universities within the Partner network. The Centre will also provide support to those institutions interested in developing in-house e-learning resource centres.

“Arizona State University is bound not by geography, but by principles,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow.  “Our focus is on student success and embracing technology to expand not only the quality of learning but access to education and thus our embrace of digital education. We are eager to take our work to a new level as part of this collaboration with USIU-Africa and the Mastercard Foundation to build online learning systems in Africa that are resilient to future shocks and customized to meet the individual needs of learners, anywhere on the continent.”

The initiative is aligned with the Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy and the vision for the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program to create a transformative network of young people and institutions driving inclusive and equitable socio-economic change in Africa. This initiative will connect young people to educational content that is relevant and context specific through a curriculum that reflects labour market realities, includes courses on transformative leadership and ethics, and prioritizes mental health and well-being. Students will successfully acquire knowledge and be able to fully engage with faculty and course work in a supportive online environment.

COVID-19 provided the impetus to rethink how we conceptualize and deliver education. “Digitally-enabled learning is the wave of the future,” said Philip Cotton, Director, Human Capital Development, Mastercard Foundation. “But for everyone to benefit from this trend, we have to act now to ensure that all young people – irrespective of their background or location— are able to access work-relevant training conveniently and affordably. A big part of that is strengthening the capacity of higher education institutions to deliver online learning.”

Since training began in July 2021, the 135 e-Learning Champions have commenced their learning journey by completing the two-week virtual Master Class for Teaching Online with ASU and have advanced to the next phase, which includes Specialized Coaching tracks in Instructional Design and Online Pedagogy with USIU-Africa.

The partners participating in the first phase of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program e-Learning initiative are:

  1. African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
  2. American University of Beirut
  3. Ashesi University
  4. EARTH University
  5. Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)
  6. Makerere University
  7. United States International University-Africa
  8. University of Abomey-Calavi
  9. University of Gondar
  10. University of Rwanda

www.mastercardfdn.org