The Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme Foundation (ISFAP) wishes to commend the 1472 graduates who have obtained university degrees in occupations in high demand through its bursary scheme since its inception in 2017. The majority of these graduates have obtained qualifications in Engineering Sciences, with 361 total graduates to date.
Since its establishment, ISFAP has allocated more than R2 billion to funding students from poor and middle backgrounds, with a substantial amount of which being dedicated to psycho-social assistance, or ‘wraparound support’, for its enrolled students. Engineering, Accounting, and Medicine were the fields with the highest number of graduates, with 351 and 312 graduates, respectively.
“It’s taken a lot of commitment to get to this point; students, funders, and of course the team at ISFAP have made significant investments to get here. We’ve effectively supported close to 1,500 young people to empower themselves and support their families, while making a meaningful contribution to society,” said Werner Abrahams, CEO of ISFAP.
“While we are pleased with our progress, we know that there are many more deserving young South Africans who want to become educated and empowered to build a life of value for themselves and their community,” he said. “Our vision and mission are to support as many deserving young South Africans on this journey as we possibly can,” he added.
The team at ISFAP is aware that there is great room to collaborate with other players in the higher education sector and has issued a call, especially to private sector companies as well as other bursary funds, to collaborate and work together to support poor and missing middle students who want to pursue tertiary qualifications in occupations in high demand.
While the organisation has indicated that it is pleased with the rates of progress across all streams, it has noted that students enrolled in Engineering programmes tend to require more intensive support during the course of their studies. For this reason, ISFAP has indicated that the ‘wraparound support’ intended for Engineering students will receive an added layer of support that will enable students, regardless of their backgrounds, to meet the university-level criteria for maths and science needed in order to succeed. It also intends to engage funders in supporting students who may need to engage in extended degree programmes.
“Building up to this point has been uniquely challenging in some respects, and we hope to see more investment in the holistic funding and support of our students in future. This is because our model requires a greater investment to be made per student on average because of the intensive support that we offer, and the results speak for themselves. We’re committed to making every effort to capacitate and support each and every one of our students to succeed,” Abrahams added.
“As we work to capacitate more young South Africans to become skilled contributors to society, we also wish to invite businesses and other bodies to continue to partner with us in making this critical investment into the education of deserving young South Africans,” Abrahams concluded.
