NGO to offer tertiary scholarships in 2020

The founder of local non-profit, non-governmental organisation Give another Chance Foundation (GACF) stays focused on providing basic education from pre-school to university, and healthcare

Founder of Give Another Chance Foundation, Miranda Thakurdeen

to underprivileged children in rural and urban communities.
As such, the NGO is taking another step towards providing greater education opportunities to tertiary level students.
In the New Year, the organization, through a collaboration with an overseas university, will offer scholarships for three students entering into the tertiary education level. They will be selected from Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice.
In a recent interview with the GACF founder, Miranda Thakurdeen, it was explained that the new initiative is set to hand out three scholarships per year.
According to Thakurdeen, with the basic cost to kick start the initiative already worked out, students will now be selected by a team from the organisation once they fit the criteria set out by the NGO.
“It’s more like we’re starting off back with some bursaries, we’re working with an organisation overseas that will grant a scholarship. We are trying to offer three scholarships per year for students from Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice…We are going to have a team selecting these persons for the three counties. Specifically, students who are going into tertiary education because we want to assist them, and were hoping to start off in January…even though it’s free you know we will have to pay the basic cost, so we worked out what we will have to pay here in Guyana to get that done, ” the founder stated.
Nevertheless, it was noted that students can pursue any study field once the scholarship is granted.
“We will have to set a Board to decide but you will have to be qualified first. It doesn’t entail religion, bias or race….what I can tell you is that it’s not just medicine they can study but also management etc so based on that [qualifications] we will be selecting,” she said.
After being founded seven years ago, the GACF to date has extended its services through the provision of education materials and lessons from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) to Regions One (Barima-Waini), Four (Demerara-Mahaica) and Five (Mahaica-Berbice), assisting scores of children.