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Kampala
Twenty one students from twenty one different schools around the country will each win a fully paid scholarship from MTN Uganda this year following the launch of the annual 21 days of Y’ello Care staff initiative.
21 days of Y’ello Care is an annual 21 day long MTN staff volunteerism initiative in which employees across MTN’s international footprint take time off to physically get involved in activities that uplift communities around them through financial, physical and emotional contributions of staff and MTN as a corporate citizen.
The theme this year is, “Investing in Education”, but with a special focus on ICT in education, which is coherent with MTN’s new vision, “To lead in the delivery of a bold new digital world to our customers.”
In line with this new vision, and as part of the activities for this year’s campaign, MTN Uganda in partnership with Gayaza High School launched an e-learning platform in June 2012 that enables students from schools across the country to access educational material from the recommended national syllabus as well as other relevant materials.
To win the scholarships, MTN and Gayaza are initially working with 50 participating schools that will be required to each register at least five students to take part in an on- line aptitude exam with 50 questions to be answered correctly within one hour and 15 minutes.
The aptitude test will be marked by the system and results provided instantly in real time. The tests will be done at regional hub schools where participating students and schools will converge on the 14th June. On this day, mentorship and career guidance classes will also be conducted for participating students.
Anthony Katamba MTN Uganda’s GM – Corporate Services explained that the e-learning platform is an initiative geared at impacting and empowering learners with in the country through improved electronic educational content and user enabling apps, considering that the whole world is now going online.
“At MTN, we believe in empowerment of the communities in various areas. Education is one such area which is very close to our hearts because of the direct link between improved literacy and the socio-economic status of any community. The partnership on this e-learning platform will therefore empower and enable students from all regions, both rural and urban, not only access quality education efficiently, but also improve their ICT knowledge, skills and exposure, along the way,” Katamba said.
The hub schools for the regional activations this year are Makerere College for central, Mwiri College for Eastern, Mvara Secondary School Northern and Bweranyangi Girls School for Western. The scholarships have been split equally among regions, to make 20, but with one additional special one to make the 21.
There will also be a two day workshop starting 6th June to empower and equip head teachers and other key teachers from participating schools on e-learning change management as well as motivational speeches from the MTN senior management team.
The MTN Uganda CEO, Mazen Mroué said, “The funding of the project is solely dependent on contributions from MTN Staff who also physically get involved in the campaign activities. Leveraging on our regional presence across the country, the planned activities will allow a cross section of our staff to participate in this worthy Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. MTN Uganda firmly believes that ICT sector holds tremendous promise as an enabler of social development especially in Education”.
As part of a drive to generate positive content for the e-learning platform, MTN Uganda will also initiate a competition on its Facebook page with the objective of acquiring innovative content & applications to support the Uganda Schools eLearning platform. MTN has the largest local Facebook Fan base currently at 110,000 fans, a sufficient platform to generate relevant content based on defined criteria.
