The Cabinet Secretary for Education, Ezekiel Machogu has hailed the Equity Group Foundation (EGF) for enabling hundreds of students from poor family backgrounds to secure secondary and higher education.
Machogu said the organization’s Wings to Fly Scholarship Programme has enabled many students to make contributions to national development and other countries as engineers, doctors, financial experts, and other fields.
The Cabinet Secretary made the remarks when the Executive Director of EGF, Dr. James Mwangi made a courtesy call on him in his office yesterday.
Present during the occasion were the Principal Secretary for Basic Education, Dr. Belio Kipsang, and the Principal Secretary for Higher Education and Research, Dr. Beatrice Muganda Inyangala.
Dr. Mwangi thanked the government for the support it had accorded EGF, saying the support had enabled it to give scholarships to hundreds of children over the years it was established.
He said some 17,000 of the students have accessed University education 3,400 of whom have completed university Education.
Mwangi said 871 of the students have secured scholarships in universities in the USA, with 218 of them in Ivy Universities in the USA.
He added that the foundation has created a program to provide a pathway for 14 percent of the students who don’t attain the minimum qualifications for University Education to access scholarships to undertake courses in Technical and Vocational Training colleges.
Dr. Kipsang said the programme, now in its fifteenth year, had changed the lives of hundreds of children and thanked EGF for the philanthropic gesture.
Dr. Inyangala asked EGF to partner with the government to train instructors saying the training will sharpen their ability to provide first-rate training experience to students undertaking courses in TVET.
The Wings to Fly scholarship program, an initiative of the Equity Group and Master Card Foundation (MCF), supports secondary education for top-performing children from financially challenged backgrounds.
The program offers comprehensive support for the scholars through the provision of tuition fees, accommodation, books, uniforms, shopping, pocket money and transport to and from school during their 4 years of secondary education.
By Vostine Ratemo
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