2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

The 2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge is providing grants of up to $100,000 to find a solution that has significant potential to solve one of humanity’s most pressing problems.

This prize program is a call to the world’s artists, scientists, designers, architects, engineers, students, and entrepreneurs committed to playing a transformative role in addressing the biggest issues we face today.

Named “socially-responsible design’s highest award” by Metropolis Magazine, The Buckminster Fuller Challenge program has attracted and awarded bold, visionary, and tangible solutions to the world’s most complex problems. Answering Buckminster Fuller’s call for a design science revolution to make the world work for all, Challenge winners exemplify the kind of breakthrough approach urgently needed to solve humanity’s most vexing challenges.

Find out more

Aga Khan International Scholarships for Meritorious Students

The Aga Khan Foundation provides a limited number of scholarships each year for postgraduate studies to outstanding students from developing countries who have no other means of financing their studies.

Scholarships are awarded on a 50% grant : 50% loan basis through a competitive application process once a year in June or July. The Foundation gives priority to requests for Master’s level courses but is also willing to consider applications for PhD programmes, when doctoral degrees are necessary for the career objectives of the student.

Requests will also be considered for travel and study awards for PhD students doing their research in Third World countries on topics judged to be of interest to the Aga Khan Development Network.

These scholarships are available in countries including:

• Bangladesh,
• India,
• Pakistan,
• Afghanistan,
• Tajikistan,
• Syria,
• Egypt,
• Kenya,
• Tanzania,
• Uganda,
• Mozambique,
• Madagascar,
• France,
• Portugal,
• UK,
• USA and Canada where the Foundation has branches.

The main criteria for selecting award winners are:

• excellent academic records,
• genuine financial need,
• admission to a reputable institution of higher learning and
• thoughtful and coherent educational and career plans.

Preference is given to students under 30 years of age.

The Foundation assists students with tuition fees and living expenses only. The cost of travel is not included in AKF scholarships. Applicants are requested to make every effort to obtain funding from other sources as well, so that the amount requested from the Foundation can be reduced to a minimum. Preference is given to those who have been able to secure some funding from alternative sources.

Half of the scholarship amount is considered as a loan, which must be reimbursed with an annual service charge of 5%.

Students may obtain application forms as of January 1st each year from AKF offices or Aga Khan Education Services / Boards in their countries of current residence.

The deadline for submission of applications is March 31^st.For more information visit

http://www.akdn.org/akf_scholarships.asp

Find fellowship opportunities for 2012 by visiting http://www.yipekenya.org/News.htm

Global Health & Innovation Conference 2012 at Yale

Date: Saturday, April 21 – Sunday, April 22, 2012
Venue: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

The Global Health & Innovation Conference is the world’s largest global health conference and social entrepreneurship conference. This must-attend, thought-leading conference annually convenes 2,200 leaders, changemakers, students, and professionals from all fields of global health, international development, and social entrepreneurship. Register during January to secure the lowest registration rate.

The conference’s confirmed speakers include:

Keynote Addresses

• Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer, Acumen Fund
• Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea
• Jeffrey Sachs, PhD, Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University; Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University; Special Advisor to Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon
• Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, MD, MPH, Director of Health, Millennium Village Project, Earth Institute at Columbia University

Read more

MFA in Design for Social Innovation – Call for Applications

Design for Social Innovation at School of Visual Arts in New York is looking for a diverse cohort of 25 students for its new two year program. You can be a designer, or anyone who is a creative, visual thinker looking for deep experience and immersion and a path to a career as a leader in this exciting new field.

Applicants from a variety of backgrounds, experience and interests are encouraged to apply, including fine arts; graphic, new media and product design; technology; business; science; engineering; social science and economics.

Learn more >>>

K.C.P.E Results Meaningless

By Harrison Mumia

I had been enjoying my holiday till I saw parents on Citizen TV dancing with their children for scoring 440 / 500 MKS. It was comic. The parents did not seem to realize that the world today has changed. The dancing and screaming for me was a sign of short lived pride, and a lack of understanding of the world we live in. As Sam Ongeri announced the results, I realized how backward we are as a society, how crappy our education system is.

In the United States, have you ever heard an education minister coming on CNN to announce results? Or in Canada? Did you see parents dancing on ABC, NBC, and other TV stations? It’s because their education system emphasized capability and talent, not merely education as Kenyans know it. We seem to praise the children who get 400 MKS as if they are the brightest. No !! It’s our Education System that recognizes this stupidity. Children are not all about their marks. We should create a culture of appreciating other capabilities, like football, swimming, singing, dancing, for not all children can be the same.

Our media, by going berserk about the results, is creating the impression that all that matters in Kenya is the stupid KCPE results, which most of us do not even put in our CVs. We should have an education system that recognizes that humans are capable of many many things. We should scrap KCPE, and we should avoid grading students based on marks. It’s outdated and not helpful.

Let me first congratulate the average students who got 300 MKS. For them, all is not lost. They will become the Caroline Mutoko’s of the future, the Mwalimu Kingangi’s, the business men and women who shall run vast empires.

For the celebrating parents, hold your horses. Today in Kenya, Jobs are scarce. Everyone has a degree. And degrees are not difficult to get. Even with a C+ your child can do medicine. So it does not matter that your child scored highly in primary school, let alone high school. Higher education has been liberalized. It matters less what your child did in  primary school.

And the Job market has changed. Kenyans are more jobless than ever. Degrees do not guarantee jobs. Sometimes ethnicity will do you a better job at getting a job. So to those celebrating parents, relax. You are just being rush when you celebrate. KCPE results mean nothing, if only to demonstrate that your child has basic capabilities of learning and  retaining stuff.

And Alliance High School and Starehe are no longer those prestigious schools that every parent wanted their children to go to. We have schools that have come up and are offering quality all round education, where they build talent and potential. And parents have realized this.

KCPE results are meaningless, and they just show how our Education System is messed up.

Harrison N. Mumia, Central Bank of Kenya

Copyright © The Atheist

Dell Social Innovation Challenge

What if every student who believed they could change the world actually had the tools to do it?

That’s what the Dell Social Innovation Challenge is all about. Since 2007, more than 15,000 students from 90 countries have proposed more than 3,000 ideas for tackling social and environmental problems. Participants are given the mentoring, tools and cash prizes needed to take their projects to the next level. Over the years more than $350,000 has been awarded to teams from around the world who’ve had the courage, vision and passion to turn their “What Ifs” into action.

Any undergrad or graduate student in any field of study, from any country, can enter the challenge. This isn’t your traditional business plan competition – you can enter a project at any stage, whether you’ve just thought of an idea or are already running an organization. It doesn’t matter if your idea is nonprofit or for-profit.

Read more http://www.yipekenya.org/Dell Social Innovation Challenge.html

Google Photography Prize

Google+ is only a few months old, but the photography community is already thriving on it. More than 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded in the first 100 days.

Google have teamed up with Saatchi Gallery, London for the Google Photography Prize, a chance for students around the world to showcase their photos on Google+ and have their work exhibited in a major art institution.

The contest is open to university students worldwide. Visit http://www.google.com/photographyprize for further details.

The deadline to enter is January 31^st 2012.

Orskov Foundation Grants – Call for Applications

The Orskov Foundation is a member of the Network of International Development Organizations in Scotland (NIDOS) and works for the development of poorest rural communities in the world.

The foundation tries to integrate agricultural education with community projects so that communities may find their own solutions to the complex problems they face every day. The foundation encourages individual students as well as community projects by offering them the grants.

Orskov Foundation is currently seeking grant applications for individual student and community project categories.

 

Student Funding

• Applications seeking funding for equipment, or attendance at conferences, will NOT be funded.
• Applications seeking funding to cover the costs of complete Bachelor, Master or Doctorate courses, or parts of Bachelor, Master or Doctorate courses will NOT be funded.
• Applications seeking funding to cover the costs of Bachelor, Master or Doctorate research projects will NOT be funded.
• Applications that cannot demonstrate the potential to alleviate poverty and/or provide sustainable environmental benefits will NOT be funded.
• Applications from students not studying degrees within for agriculture, land use or environment will NOT be funded.
• The student grants are only provided to help support costs of training at a university or similar organisation other than the university/college in which you are registered at the time of the application.
• Eligible students (graduate students from any countries which are, in the opinion of the trustees, regarded as developing countries) must be registered for graduate degrees at their home universities in a developing country and must be able to demonstrate that they have full support from the relevant university department/organisation that they are seeking training from.
• Preference will be given to support training aimed at sustainable land use problems with an emphasis on animal, plant and soil interactions, where it can be demonstrated that, in addition to contributing to knowledge, they will (a) have the potential to alleviate poverty and (b) provide sustainable environmental benefits, including adaptation/mitigation to the impact of climate change.

Community Project Funding

• Funding will only be provided where a clear demand can be demonstrated and evidence provided that the projects will be established and managed with the active participation of the community groups involved.
• Community projects will only be considered eligible if they are based in countries which are, in the opinion of the trustees, regarded as developing countries.
• Community projects demonstrating innovation, rather than imitating the projects that have already been funded, are more likely to be considered.
• The Trustees will only consider projects with a budget up to a maximum of £2,500
• Community projects must be able to demonstrate that they will be managed using the revolving fund principle.  This is a core requirement for projects and if you can demonstrate an effective and innovative approach to achieving this, your application is more likely to be considered.

Last date for submitting the applications is December 31^st 2011.

To find the guidelines to apply, visit http://www.orskovfoundation.org

Find more grants by visiting http://www.yipekenya.org/News.htm

Scholarship opportunities to pursue Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral Programs in the Czech Republic

The Government of the Czech Republic is seeking applications from eligible candidates in developing countries for scholarships to pursue studies at public institutions of higher education in the Czech Republic for the academic year 2012-2013.

A number of scholarships are offered every year to foreign nationals within the framework of country’s Foreign Development Assistance Program in support of Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral study programs.

These Government Scholarships are designed to cover the standard length of study of the respective program.

 

Scholarship courses and duration

Within its international development co-operation, the Czech Republic provides scholarships to study:

in Czech language:

 

• Bachelor’s degree programs (three to four years)
• Master’s degree programs (four to six years)

 

in English:

 

• Follow-up Master’s degree programs (one to three years)
• Doctoral degree programs (three to four years);

The language and preparatory studies are organized by the Institute of Language and Preparatory Studies of the Charles University (1 year, only for applicants for a scholarship to study in Czech)

 

Educational Requirements

Admission to the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs in the CR requires prior completion of secondary or full secondary vocational education equivalent to the GCSE in the Czech Republic.

Admission to the Follow-up Master’s program also requires prior successful completion of the Bachelor’s program.

 

Fields of Study and Admission Procedure

While awarding scholarships to study in Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs in the Czech language, the list of recommended fields of study is taken into consideration. The list is updated to fit the needs of a particular country and with regard to the ongoing development co-operation projects.

For Bachelor/Master study programs plus one-year preparatory course of the Czech language (which is combined with other field-specific training), the government scholarships are awarded to graduates from upper secondary schools who can enrol only in study programs in which they follow instruction in the Czech language. Depending on the subject area, applicants are normally required to take entrance examinations at the respective institution of higher education. The scholarship award is conditional upon a successful passing of entrance examinations.

 

Submission of proposals

Proposals to award scholarships for the new academic year, along with necessary documents must be forwarded to the Czech Embassy in the country on a date determined by the embassy so that the documentation is available to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in Prague by 15 January at the latest.

A limited number of scholarships is offered to students from developing countries who file their applications with the respective National UNESCO Commissions.

For more information, visit http://www.msmt.cz

Enterprise profile: KopiBure – An Innovative Student Advertising Business

KopiBure (the name is swahili for free copies) is an advertising company that deals with advertising in Universities, Colleges and other tertiary institutions of learning.

Kopibure manages photocopy machines on educational campuses. The business model works by using blank sides of paper that is left after students do their printing or photocopy on ordinary photocopy paper. Kopibure place adverts and messages that are relevant to this target market, at the back of those papers and the students use the front to do their printing and photocopy work.

Kopibure liaise with the many photocopy outlets in schools and come to an agreement where Kopibure can place a photocopy machine in their premises.

Read our interview with Kopibure’s founder Peter Nduru here http://www.yipekenya.org/KopiBure – An Innovative Student Advertising Business.htm