Grade 10 Scholarship Candidates Nominated by Selection Committee
By David Lamb and Julie Walz, Fellows
The prospect of creating a community based selection committee for a scholarship is to be honest, a bit scary. We’re placing a lot of money and a life changing decision in the hands of a community dominated by family ties and hidden politics. Is it possible to create a group who will objectively come together to select a student to receive a scholarship?
The women’s selection committee in Uta has proven that it is.
One of the goals of the Mundzuku Foundation has always been to make the selection of scholarship recipient community-based. It’s a novel idea, to be sure, but we never wanted to be the ones to choose the student and were convinced that we could find some way to bring the community together. We decided to focus on working with the women in Uta, hoping to empower them and help them come together to make a tangible difference in the lives of youth in their community. We also knew that there was a better chance that women would hold the kids’ interests in mind and would stay in the community year after year to make this a sustainable process.
Then we met Angie. Having started the ladies’ soccer team, Angie is a spunky woman, passionate about empowering women and willing to take charge to get what she wants done. She was a natural leader for the selection committee. She began talking to women, gauging interest, and finding those that should be included on the committee – looking to balance education, family background, and social ties to create the most diverse committee possible. A committee of five women was selected and they began the meetings to determine how they were going to select the top Grade 10 students, one of whom will get to go to a private high school in Nelspruit for two years and then on to University, fully funded.
These women have blown us away. They are running the selection process more smoothly and more objectively than we could have ever done. A meeting was scheduled on Monday where the women checked the marks of all Grade 10 students, selecting the top ten based on overall performance in every subject. They decided to go next for teacher evaluations; asking five different teachers to rank each of the top ten students on a scale from 1 to 10, based on class participation, leadership, and overall character. Adding up the scores from each of the five teachers, the women were able to get a total for each student and able to choose the top six candidates from there. The top six were all girls, and although we were surprised, the women on the committee were not as they told us that girls are consistently at the top of the class at Manyangana. How did they decide to choose the top three from there? They had the girls write application letters to the bursary explaining why they should be chosen, what they want to do in the future, etc. The application letters were read blindly with numbers instead of names so as to keep the process completely objective. The women had Grade 11 and 12 teachers read the applications and using an objective criterion, they were able to select the top three from there. These three candidates are now working on filling out the MAD application and we will soon move forward with the selection of a final recipient.
The most amazing part of this whole selection process is that is has been completely driven by them. The two of us have essentially played no part; sitting as observers at meetings and watching as the women debated what type of Grade 10 student they were looking for and the best way to interview teachers. It’s exciting to watch as these women take charge; fairly and objectively selecting the student whose life they are going to change.
