Thread by @mmnjug

In our society there are many brilliant people who have sadly not been able to get the chance to achieve their potential and end up wasting away in the towns and villages. - @HapaKenya

There is a myriad of reasons why this happens but for the most part it has been due to lack of opportunities brought about by financial constraints.

We find that a lot of bright students from poor backgrounds at times find themselves not being able to progress beyond high school due to lack of finances.

It was a response to this that the @KeEquityBank Group Foundation started the #EquityLeadersProgram in a bid to break the cycle of poverty by increasing access to tertiary education.

Under the program, #WingstoFly beneficiaries together with top performing students In KCSE are given access to leadership training, coaching, mentorship prior to joining university.

The #EquityLeadershipProgram also connects these students to scholarship opportunities at the top universities across the world.

Since it was launched, the #EquityLeadershipProgram has been able to benefit 13,775 scholars of whom 633 are either currently attending or are alumni of leading universities across the world.

These are brilliant students who would have most probably not been able to access these opportunities had it not been for the @KeEquityBank Group Foundation through its ELP program.

In 2020, the #EquityLeadershipProgram was able to airlift 92 scholars to 43 institutions. The scholars were spread out in five continents in different countries including the USA, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Costa Rica, UK, UAE, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda and South Africa.

Of this number, 19 scholars had been admitted to Ivy League Universities in USA including:

Yale - 2
Harvard - 4
University of Pennsylvania - 3
Princeton - 3
Cornell - 1
Dartmouth - 2
Columbia - 2
Brown - 2

These scholars were to receive scholarships worth over Ksh2B and a stipend of Kshs16M to facilitate their preparation and travel to their host countries. If this is not life changing, then I don’t know what is!!

As part of #EquityLeadershipProgram, @KeEquityBank provides paid internship to top performing secondary school scholars including #WingstoFly alumni beneficiaries.

The program aims to educate and provide mentorship and exposure to Kenyan youth, create a generation of value-based leaders, who bring about positive transformation to the community by driving sustainable economic growth and social progress in Kenya and globally.

A good example of an individual whose life has been transformed by the #EquityLeadershipProgram is Douglas Gichohi Maina.

At just four years, he started working as herds boy in his neighbors homestead due to the fact that his Mum was so poor that she could not afford to pay school fees for him.

One day while grazing his goats, a village elder who took pity on him and took him to school for baby class.

However, due to the fact that his clothes were torn, other kids used to laugh at him which made the whole schooling experience unbearable. This saw him quit school and go back to herding the goats.

While he was out in the fields he met a man named Gerald Githinji who was also grazing his cattle. Seeing how young he was, Gerald asked him why he was not in school, to which Maina responded that he did not have Ksh. 250 for paying school fees.

On hearing this, the man told him that he would give him the money to enable him to go back to school. Gerald lived upto his promise and gave him the money to study, which enabled Douglas to go back to school.

Other than just providing school fees, Gerald also became Douglas’s legal guardian together with his siblings on realizing that his mum was ailing and was not able to take care of them.

It was this stability that enabled Maina to settle down in school and within no time he was among the best students. He exceled in his KCSE exams and emerged the 7th best student in the country which got him an admission to Alliance High School and a #WingstoFly scholarship.

The scholarship other than paying for his school fees also provided shopping as well as transport to school and back. They were also given a chance to attend conferences where he met people like Former U.S President Bill Clinton and Businessman Manu Chandaria.

All this had a great impact on his life such that by the time he was leaving high school his mindset had been transformed to seeing the sky as the limit.

Maina’s hardwork and tenacity saw him pass his KCSE examinations and get an opportunity to join Duke University to pursue Economics and Political Science.

Before joining university, Maina got an internship at @KeEquityBank which acted as part of his coaching and mentorship to prepare him for what lay ahead of him.

After finishing his university education, Maina intends to come back to Kenya so as to be part of the transformation. His dream is to see Kenya become a country where opportunities are available to everybody not just to the chosen few.

Maina’s is one of the thousands of stories of how the @KeEquityBank Group is changing people’s lives for the better through the #EquityLeadershipProgram. As Gerald notes, Maina’s dreams would never have been realized were it not for them.

Duke University admits @KeEquityBank's #EquityLeadershipProgram beneficiary Maina Douglas from Mweiga in Nyeri County bit.ly/3cC8Zq0

From working as a herds boy to attending Duke University; the story of how @KeEquityBank's #EquityLeadershipProgram transformed the life of Douglas Maina bit.ly/3RGT6yI by @HapaKenya