NEWS & INSIGHT
SCHOLARSHIP FUND FOR AN UNDER-REPRESENTED COMMUNITY COUNTRY: UK SCHOOL: Bayes Business School, City, University of London Bayes Business School has launched a new 10-year commitment to increasing the number of students from under-represented communities in higher education and business through its Black Student Scholarship Programme. Covering tuition fees and an annual stipend of £6,000 GBP across three years of undergraduate study for each recipient, the programme’s total cost will be around £5 million GBP – the amount that the Business School received from the Sir John Cass Foundation (now renamed The Portal Trust) when it became Cass Business School in 2001. Sir John Cass was an English merchant born in the 17th century whose wealth and business were tied to the Atlantic slave trade. These links prompted the Business School to change its name this year, and itl has now moved to retrospectively make the entire value of the original donation available to young people that are the most affected by his legacy. Student recipients will also receive mentoring support from second and third-year students, as part of the Bayes Mentoring and Coaching for Leadership module. To receive a scholarship, prospective students must be from the UK (qualifying for the home fee status), of black ethnicity and come from a household of an annual net income of £30,000 GBP or less. The student also must meet the conditions of their chosen course. ‘Since we first embarked on the process to find a new name for our Business School, we have always said we are committed to backing up our words with actions to improve diversity, equity and inclusion at Bayes,’ said Caroline Wiertz, Deputy Dean at Bayes Business School. ‘The Bayes Business School Black Student Scholarship programme underpins a strong desire to widen participation and increase minority representation among our student base. I believe it is an excellent starting point that we can be very proud of, but at the same time it is just a starting point. We still have a lot more work to do.’ / EB
FINANCIAL ADVICE AND TRAINING FOR EX-COMBATANTS COUNTRY: Colombia SCHOOL: Faculty of Administration, Universidad de los Andes To mark the signing of the peace agreement five years ago between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas, the Faculty of Administration of the Universidad de los Andes told the story of five students who spent a week in the Territorial Space for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR) of Mesetas in the department of Meta in 2018. The reintegration of demobilised ex-combatants to civilian life through new housing, employment and opportunities is stipulated in the peace agreement, and the National Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization estimates that 13,139 ex-combatants are currently in this process of reintegration. Of these, 98.6% now have affiliation to the health system, 83% have been linked to the pension system and 94.8% have banking benefits. However, it has been demonstrated that former combatants need more than this for a successful transition. Advice, support and training are also fundamental to the process. This is precisely what the Universidad de los Andes students were helping to provide. They taught participating ex-combatants how to manage the money given to them through government subsidies and how to formulate the best strategies for their projects – examples of which included a tourism venture and a bakery – with which many ex-combatants and their families now support themselves. ‘At first, it was difficult because we had prepared something with a demanding level, and we realised that some cannot read or write. It completely changed our outlook in many ways,’ said one of the students, Jaime Varela. Indeed, understanding the perspective of the ex- combatants, who were often forced into conflict and denied access to education, was perhaps the biggest takeaway for the students. ‘We have other contexts. They like to tell stories, and there you understand their point of view a little,’ said another participating student, Catalina Jiménez. ‘We stopped seeing them as that guerrilla they show on television. It is a group made up of people… and we begin to ask ourselves about what could have happened if we had lived what they had to experience,’ added a third student, Daniel Porras. / TBD
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AMBITION | Be in Brilliant Company
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