Michael Ncube on Finding Inspiration
I have been humbled and blessed to have been selected for the Global UGRAD scholarship program which sent three finalists from Zimbabwe to study in the United States of America for a semester during the 2019-2020 academic year. This experience was an eye opener to how brilliantly the United States of America functions and the capacity to which resources are efficiently managed, even leaving room to give back to society such as in the community service requirement. This truly challenged me to great lengths and opened my mind to the possibilities one can achieve when you put your mind to it. Through this inspiration, I have been able to create a foundation known as the Ncube Girl Global Child Foundation which has been able to fundraise and sponsor 30 young top achiever female students in examination classes (7th grade) in Zimbabwe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through this scholarship fund, we chose 30 girls from two local community primary schools and paid for their tuition for the rest of the academic year of 2020. As this has been a dreadful year with a lot of unexpected turns of events affecting the world and for many young girls, I felt strongly that I should contribute. The organization I have created aims to create and facilitate support and awareness around the community benefits of educating girls and women from a young age.
In 2020, the objectives of the scholarship are to raise as much funding as possible for at least 100+ female students with the goal of having them successfully graduate from primary to high school during this difficult academic year. We want girls in Zimbabwe to have successful prospects of getting into high school for the upcoming year 2021.
After we achieve our goal of working with 100+ young students for 2020, the organization aims to expand our operations in the next 5 years and build safe community Impact Centers which will act as a library, workspace and recreational area to give young girls a chance to grow and develop without any constraints.