Scholarship Contest Preview

 

Raphael Njararuhi, Somalia Coordinator

Sheripher Dinala, South Africa Coordinator

As the result of the strong engagement and dedication of our intern student volunteers working across Africa, Iduka will soon be announcing two additional scholarships to underserved, underrepresented, and/or underprivileged African students who live and intend to pursue post-secondary education in an African country participating in the Iduka Africa Pilot Project (iAPP).

The registration process will start February 5. Application guidelines for this online scholarship contest will be posted on this blog in the next few days.

YOUR OPINION MATTERS TO US! If you would like to nominate a student or are a student who would like to take part in our next round of scholarships, make sure to pre-register by leaving a comment on our We Media page by February 4. We are using your comments to evaluate your interested in our African scholarship program and the viability of peer-voted contests in Africa.

Current Iduka student volunteer interns who plan to apply are strongly encouraged to indicate their intention by posting their comments on the above mentioned page. As simple comment will be enough, but you may also use this forum to express your opinions about our programs in general and our Africa pilot project in particular. We want to hear from you!

Please stay tuned for more details about this exciting new grant.

Survey Results

“Thanks for the survey! This shows your openness to the project, but also it instills trust to members. Bravo and keep it up when it comes to issues of decision-making!” – one survey respondent

Survey results are in! We had 54 people fill out the online survey. Pretty good, considering it was only posted on our blog over this past weekend and only lasted three days.

Although this survey involved a small sample and was non scientific, it does offer a good range of opinions about the process among a group of people highly committed to the project.

The overall results are mixed, but quite instructive. Roughly half of you want Iduka to award the scholarships the non-traditional way, while the other half prefers us to stick to the traditional method of having a scholarship committee select the grantees. However, the majority of you indicated that you’d like to nominate a student and is willing to participate in the selection process if requested to vote in an online voting contest.

Some argue that the traditional way is boring and tedious, while the supporters of the traditional selection method voice their concern about the fairness of the online contest. Some respondents fear the possibility that the winner will end up being the “most popular” and not necessarily the most deserving underserved, underrepresented, and/or underprivileged student.

We would like to finish by sharing one comment from the survey. One person wrote: “What about a selection process that combines both the traditional and non traditional options?” We find that this suggestion will guarantee the integrity of the process while still enabling participation of our online supporters.

Thank you to those of you who provided your opinions. We will work hard to make the process fair, transparent, and fun. We will soon announce the application guidelines. So, please stay tuned if you are interested in participating in our upcoming round of scholarships.

Scholarship Process Survey

Iduka is planning to award more scholarships as part of its Pilot Project. We would like to know your opinion about our scholarship process.

Make sure to give us your opinion below and tell us your name and e-mail so we can notify you of the results.

Your opinion matters to us!

How would you like us to award our next scholarships? The traditional way: decision by scholarship committee The non-traditional way: decision by peer-voted contest

Would you participate in a voting contest to choose our next scholarship recipients? Yes No

Would you be interested in nominating a student? Yes No

Name

Email

Any additional comments?

This survey was created to give you the opportunity to give us your opinion about our scholarship process. So, please feel free to share your thoughts, comments, and suggestions under additional comments.

Thank you for your time and participation in this survey!

MAKE SURE TO USE THE BUTTONS BELOW TO SPREAD THE WORD!

Happy New Year!

We wish y’all a very happy New Year!

As an all-volunteer organization, we are particularly thankful to all those who during the course of this past year have donated their skills, knowledge, time and effort in support of our mission and students. We must also thank our Board and our volunteer interns who have blessed us tremendously this past year.

Christmas at Iduka Thrift Store - Zachary Martim, Micaella Martim, and Angela Lorefice (Board Secretary)

This last, and first full year of operations has been a great one for Iduka. To focus on our mission we closed the Port St. Lucie Thrift Store in April. Since then we have designed and are currently implementing a series of pilot projects in the United States and Africa. Through this effort we have enrolled more than 150 student volunteer interns, engaged over 5000 online supporters through various social media groups, participated in numerous local initiatives, but most importantly, we awarded our first grant and established our first partnership outside the United States.

We have also joined the blogosphere to document our progress. In less than three months approximately 5000 readers visited our blog. We will continue using this space to raise awareness about our initiatives, make the project more participatory, and share with you many more of our students’ stories. We will also seek to expand the number of topics and invite you to fully participate in our advocacy efforts to make college more affordable for everyone.

There are many ways you can make a difference at Iduka trough donating, volunteering, singing a petition, subscribing our blog, joining our many social network communities and spreading the word, or simply leaving a word of encouragement under our student’s profiles.

We are thankful for your support, feedback and encouragement, and the great work many of you are doing to make higher education possible to students in your communities in the United States and around the world.

We sincerely hope 2011 will see the continuation of the movement we have just started. Together with your support we know we can micro-finance education, one student at a time.

Have a wonderful and prosperous New Year!