The Goldfields Ghana Foundation as part of its school visitation programme has held an engagement meeting with its twenty-five sponsored students and the management of the University of Cape Coast.
According to the foundation, the visitation is to help access the academic performance and the general well-being of scholarship beneficiaries and to engage the university management on ways to improve the scheme.
The Gold Fields Ghana Foundation scholarship scheme is a Non-governmental Organization of the Tarkwa and Damang mines initiated in 2005 to provide scholarships and bursaries to students from the host communities.
This is to help the students pursue their university degrees and other tertiary programmes in Ghana as it covers tuition, accommodation, and other approved academic materials for their entire study.
In an interview with ATLFM News amid the meeting, the Community Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement Manager-Abosso Goldfields, Damang Mines, Abdel-Razak Yakubu said the aim of the scheme is to fulfill their corporate social responsibility and to promote education in the host communities.
He expressed satisfaction over the success of the meeting, adding that the input by UCC management will help improve the scheme.
He said, “Some of the ideas that have come from the school, and university senior management are quite brilliant, and then we want to go back and work on them, still continue the engagement, and see how best we can improve this scholarship program and we hope to make this a better one.”
To him, the scholarship to the beneficiaries will also help to expand education in the future.
“Education takes about forty-four percent of all our investment because we believe that if we leave behind an educated community, they can continue with the development of the community from where the mine will leave off.” He added.
To this end, Mr. Yakubu advised the students to up their game, especially those with records of low academic performance.
The Pro-Vice-Chancellor of UCC, Prof. Mrs. Rosemond Boohene appreciated the foundation for supporting the students and assured of the university’s maximum cooperation.
She emphasized saying “we are very happy that Gold Field Foundation is giving students who are brilliant but needy the opportunity to undertake university education and at the end of the day they are contributing to the human development of the country… so hopefully if their board meets and they decide on what to do, we are prepared to collaborate with them”
She also tasked the beneficiaries to take a cue from what the foundation is doing and also give back to society when the opportunity arises in the future to help others.
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Source: Eric Sekyi/ATLFMNEWS
