By Tim Rooke | Trustee
A BIG thank you to all of you who donated as part of our Global Giving fundraising campaign before Christmas. We were overwhelmed by the number of people who responded to our funding request and by the generosity you all showed. We received over 100 donations and as a result achieved an incredible fundraising total which has enabled us to begin the process of identifying students from Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania to attend the London International Youth Science Forum in 2019.
We have now formalised partnerships with Projekt Inspire in Tanzania, who run a national science boot camp for talented young scientists, the The KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme who provide a regionally based summer internship for gifted science students in Kenya, Warwick Africa who provide educational support to secondary schools in townships in South Africa and RICE 360 Institute for Global Health, who support science education initiatives in both Malawi and South Africa.
Each of our partners are working to identify the most talented young scientists from the groups they are involved with and are due to provide a short list of nominations at the end of February. Young Scientists for Africa (YoSA) will then assess students against our selection criteria and initiate the full scholarship process for each country. Over the same period, the London International Youth Science Forum has secured the participation of a number of high profile scientists to engage with students this summer, including Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Professor Jim Al-Khalili.
In the meantime, the YoSA scholarship students from 2017 and 2018 continue to develop their science careers. Christa from Rwanda is now a registered pharmacist and Rebecca is working with Innovate Kenya. Through a connection YoSA has made with the Next Einstein Forum students are linked in with national initiatives including Africa Science week. Through another YoSA connection, Gracious from Tanzania completed an internship at the Ifakara Health Institute where he developed an automated mosquito net using locally available components. He is now studying for his degree in Electrical Engineering at the Daresalaam Institute of Technology.
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