The General Manager’s Scholarship Scheme and the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation Scholarship Scheme, all under Chirano Gold Mines in the Western North region, have awarded scholarships to some 24 brilliant-but-needy students in the catchment areas of the mine.
The beneficiary students will be given full scholarships for the duration of their studies at the tertiary level.
They are the second batch of students to benefit from the two scholarship schemes, instituted by the Vice President and General Manager of Chirano and the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation.
The scholarships scheme forms part of the mine’s efforts to provide support for the improvement of education in the catchment communities through the provision of infrastructure, teacher incentives and human capital development.
The Vice President and General Manager, of Chirano Gold Mines (CGML), Terence Watungwa, said “CGML recognizes education as a critical element in the advancement of our local communities. Over the years, we have provided educational infrastructures such as classrooms, ICT labs and teachers quarters.
We recognize that beyond providing infrastructure for the education of our young ones in the area, a time will come when they have to move to other places to further their education at the tertiary level,” he stated.
The scholarships, according to Mr. Watungwa, are therefore meant to provide support beyond the basic and secondary level to the underprivileged to ensure they are not left behind.
In all, six students were awarded the General Manager’s Scholarship Scheme whereas 18 students benefited from the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation Scholarship Scheme.
Last year, 30 students were given the award. This, therefore, brings the total number of students currently being fully funded at the tertiary level by Chirano Gold Mines through the scholarship scheme to 54.
The GM’s Scholarship Scheme is an initiative of the Vice President and General Managers office to lend a hand to students from the Senior High School Level who might not be able to progress to the higher level because of the lack of financial support.
The Chirano Sefwiman Foundation Scholarship scheme on the other hand is one of the many projects of the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation, inaugurated in 2020 with seed money of US$2 million to spearhead development in our catchment area.
“All the applicants are from and have attended basic school in one of our catchment communities. They are recent Senior High School graduates who excelled at the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination,” he said.
Mr. Watungwa said the Mine is in a good position to continue funding the General Manager’s scholarship scheme and lend support to the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation following their strong growth forecast.
“Our exploration program at Chirano continued to yield excellent results and added to the operation’s mineral reserve estimates, helping extend mine life to 2026, with opportunities for further mine life extensions.
This essentially means we have found enough proven gold reserves to continue this operation for the next four years. We continue our exploration process and there are high hopes that Mine enough reserves will be discovered in the future to go beyond 2026,” he stated.
This development is envisaged to enable the Mine to continue leading the charge of development, providing employment and equipping the youth with higher education and other employable skills.
The Board Chairman of the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation (CSF), also speaking at the ceremony to present the scholarship awards to the beneficiary students, noted that “there cannot be a meaningful socioeconomic development without quality education.”
This, he said is the reason the Foundation dedicates 20 percent of its funds to promote education through scholarship.
Also, he said all of the qualified students are STEM students “which we are excited about as it is the foundation’s objective to promote the study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.”
Vice President and General Manager, of CGML, Terence Watungwa, presenting an award to a beneficiary.
