A SEVEN-YEAR educational programme targeting learners from marginalised areas between 15 and 25 years has been unveiled.
The programme, dubbed “Second Chance Pathways for Increased Access to Tertiary Education for Marginalised Young Women and Men, is being spearheaded by the Forum for African Women Educationalists Zimbabwe (Fawezi)
The programme is being implemented with support from the Mastercard Foundation through the Forum for African Women Educationalists (Fawe), a membership pan-African non-profit organisation based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Fawe operates through 34 national chapters and Fawezi is one of them.
Fawezi executive director Lydia Madyirapanze said the organisation had identified five local universities it would initially work with under the initiative.
“Fawezi Zimbabwe is part of 10 other countries in Africa that are part of a seven-year project that is being implemented from 2024 to 2030 in partnership with the Forum for African Women Educationalists with support from the Mastercard Foundation,” Madyirapanze said during a stakeholders meeting held in Gweru on Thursday.
“For some time, Fawezi has been working with the Primary and Secondary Education ministry in supporting learners to access and complete education.”
Fawezi has been in existence since 1998.
“Most of the learners that we supported during the early days could not go to universities and technical vocational training institutions and so this project is coming to create a pathway for marginalised young women and men to access tertiary education,” she said,
“So the major thing under our project is the Higher Education Access Certificate, which is a bridging curriculum which we seek to develop with the tertiary institutions we have identified.”
She said they were working with the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education (Zimche) and universities “to come up with that curriculum, develop materials and have learners who fail to access education go through that bridging programme and access degrees and diplomas of their choice”.
“We also have scholarship support that we will provide to technical and vocational centres.”
She said beneficiaries would be selected from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and climatically affected backgrounds.
Madyirapanze said learners would also be assisted with start-up capital for entrepreneurial projects as well as market and industrial linkages.
Officials from Zimche and government ministries attended the meeting.