STEM Education for African Girls

The Pro-Chancellor, Lead City University, Professor Jide Owoeye with the Founder and President of the Visiola Foundation, Lade Araba, the Registrar and the Vice-Chancellor, during the signing of the Partnership Agreement in Ibadan on June 30, 2014.

Landmark signing of Partnership Agreement between Lead City University and the Visiola Foundation

The Visiola Foundation today officially signed a Partnership Agreement with Lead City University to provide scholarships and mentoring to girls and young women who lack the financial resources required to further their education. Scholarship recipients will be selected through a competitive process to identify academically gifted students, whose socio-economic backgrounds effectively limit their educational and career prospects. The beneficiaries will additionally be mentored to ensure that they maximize their academic potential and to assist them in becoming leaders in their chosen fields.

About the Visiola Foundation

The Visiola Foundation exists to support the emergence of a new cadre of African leaders by mentoring and training academically gifted youth. The Foundation especially focuses on marginalized African girls with promise, to equip them with the moral, technical, and financial tools they require to maximize their potential as future change makers in their respective communities.

The Visiola Foundation’s vision centers on promoting values-based training, long-term planning, effective partnership, accountability, and bold leadership. We believe in the potential of Africa’s youth, and are especially passionate about bridging the gender gap by empowering high-potential girls and young women. We believe that with the right education, mentoring, and exposure, our prodigies can become change agents in their respective fields and communities. We believe that the success of our “mentees” will create a positive multiplier effect.

Goal of the LCU - Visiola Foundation Partnership

The 2012 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Global Education Digest notes that for every 10 African children who enroll in school, 4 drop out. Children (especially girls) from poor and rural communities are more likely to drop out. Moreover, by 2100, half of the world’s youth population will be African, but about one-third of Africa’s youth lack basic skills (2013 Ibrahim Forum Facts & Figures). Employers further report about the significant divide between the education being delivered in schools across the continent and the available employment. Whereas resource-rich African countries require skilled engineers, trained doctors, scientists, agricultural experts and so on, Africa produces the lowest share of engineering graduates globally and only has on average 2 physicians per 10,000 people.

Lead City University promotes “knowledge for self-reliance” in recognition of the power of education to address socio-economic inequality and promote entrepreneurship. In partnering with LCU, the Visiola Foundation seeks to create synergies and thereby maximize its impact by enabling promising students to access high-quality, values-based education that will enable them to become contributing members of society. The partnership accordingly seeks to reverse the negative trends in the educational sector and to instead produce highly skilled graduates who will help to transform their communities and indeed our great nation.

For additional information, please visit:

www.visiolafoundation.org
www.lcu.edu.ng