December 19, 2006
By Michael Tsingo
WHILE most of us are getting into the carefree festive swing, matriculants are waiting with bated breath for their results. But no matter who passes, only a few will be able to afford university tuitions.
However, with R15-million worth of scholarships on offer for deserving students from Cida (Community and Individual Development Association), a tertiary education is within reach for many youngsters.
Cida City Campus, in Johannesburg, is offering 300 scholarships worth R50 000 each for tuition fees for matriculants to study a Bachelor of Business Administration, or BBA, in its full-time degree programme.
"Most learners were saying, 'My family can't send me to university, so there is no hope even if I pass my matric,'" says Cida spokesperson Michelle Blumenau.
The Cida scholarships are aimed at high achievers. To be considered, applicants need to have passed matric with 950 points or more and should have passed higher grade English with an E or higher for maths, or should have passed standard grade English with a C or higher for maths.
Applicants who meet these requirements are screened further, including interviews, essay writing and verification of family income. Those who are successful will begin their courses in February 2007 and will get campus accommodation, food and stationery. In their second and third years students must look for their own accommodation, to make room for new first year students.
"We want first years to stay at the campus residence because we recruit them from all over South Africa, including rural areas, and they won't know where to begin," says Blumenau. "After one year they will [know] Johannesburg well enough to look for their own accommodation and even parents will not be worried about them."
Once they have their degrees, the students are not expected to pay back the money, but to upgrade their own communities in different ways.
"They [ex-students] are not expected to pay back but are encouraged to adopt a child from their own community," explains Sandile Ndlungwane, Cida's operations director. "As they say in the African tradition that it takes a whole village to raise a child, we want to … say it must take a young person who has gone through Cida to raise a child."
About 2 750 former Cida students now earn a combined R120-million in salaries, reads a college press release. According to the Cida Empowerment Fund website, 100 percent of Cida beneficiaries are black youngsters, and 60 percent of these are black women.
Apart from various specialisations the three-year BBA offers, including information technology, finance, marketing, investments, human resources, entrepreneurship and construction, students will also benefit from transcendental meditation, or TM.
"Transcendental meditation opens the awareness to the infinite reservoir of energy, creativity and intelligence that lies deep within everyone," the founder of TM, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, says on the TM-online website.
TM has a long history with Cida. In 1979 Conrad Mhlongo, Richard Peycke, Taddy Blecher and Mburu Gitonga began teaching TM in townships schools. Their programme helped youngsters to perform better in school and most of them passed matric.
The four realised, however, that many learners were not interested in passing matric because they knew that their families would not be able to send them to university. This realisation sparked the idea to establish an institution that would offer tertiary education to those who could not afford it.
With the help of other empowerment leaders, like Ndlungwane, TM was integrated into the culture of Cida, which was known as Maharish Open University when it opened in 1999.
Launched in 2000, Cida produced its third set of BBA graduates this year. And with First Lady Zanele Mbeki as its chancellor, Cida's legacy is growing every year. It has been visited and is supported by international leaders, businessmen and celebrities, such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and the Dalai Lama.
Applicants can collect forms from 54 Commissioner Street in the Johannesburg city centre, or call 011 833 8825 or email snkabinde@cida.co.za so that forms can be posted or emailed. Applications close 15 January 2007.
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