The University of the West Indies (The UWI), Mona Campus hosted seven members of the American Foundation of the University of the West Indies (AFUWI) Board of Trustees on their recent visit to Jamaica in October.
The visit culminated in a donation of more than $26 million in scholarships for UWI Mona students.
The New York-based Foundation is a charitable organisation recognised for its work in fundraising, its transformational leadership and advocacy and facilitation of higher education among nationals in the Caribbean region.
The Foundation, over the past 10 years, has provided more than 500 tuition scholarships to students across the Caribbean. AFUWI has also facilitated the donation of more than $7.5 million in goods and brokered multiple relationships with other institutions.
The delegation benefitted from a series of presentations from key members of the senior management team including the Deans of the Faculties. The delegation also led student engagement activities where they made presentations to student groupings from the Faculties of Social Sciences and Medical Sciences in town-hall-style events at the Mona School of Business and Management and the Hugh Wynter Fertility Management Unit.
The events were an opportunity for the board members to share information on their respective professions as well as their wealth of experience reserves thus providing useful insights for students prospecting such professions.
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The team comprising professionals in the areas of business/entrepreneurship; investment and finance; auditing; accounting; higher education; medicine (OBGYN); human resources/talent management among others, shared their opinions on practices and policies related to work experience in a developed market like the US.
In addressing the AFUWI Team, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Mona Campus, Professor Dale Webber thanked the delegation for visiting the campus and for engaging the students.
He highlighted the fact that the university continues to explore opportunities for collaboration with institutions of higher learning in the US in the form of exchange programmes and other educational opportunities such as international scholarships.T
he AFUWI, he said, “has always supported our mission and vision to be a global University rooted in the Caribbean and this includes improving access for our students. The AFUWI has an important role to play in creating the appropriate environment for us to get more support for our students regionally and throughout the diaspora. To achieve this, they have sought to align the needs of the university with their strategic objectives and by extension their mission – and for this we are grateful.”
Speaking to the strategic objectives of AFUWI, board member, Dr Hazel Carter said “one of the main goals is to align our mission, and our vision with the needs of The UWI. Very often foundations may have their own particular goals and might not be in sync with the organisations who seek funding.
We see ourselves as part of the university, and we are also the representative of the university in North America. One of our main goals is to ensure that students can continue their work at the university, so scholarships are one of the major things that we do.
“Coming from this visit this time around we need to go back and do a little more soul-searching in terms of ways we can assist the university more.
The main thing is to ensure that what we do, is what you would like us to do and to create more of a presence for the university, not just in New York, but North America,” Dr Carter said.
Source: $26.7 Million in Scholarship Funding for UWI Mona Students as published in the Loop Jamaica websites.
