UWC Receives Major Donation from Shelby Davis
** Introducing the new Davis-UWC Dare to Dream programme **
For UWC, the year 2018 is off to a fantastic start: Shelby Davis has just announced another major donation to UWC of at least 100 million USD! This gift is one of the most significant gifts ever made to a secondary educational institution. Davis’ donation will be rolled out across the UWC movement through the new Davis-UWC “Dare to Dream” programme which will provide additional scholarship funding of 5 million USD per generation of UWC national committee-selected students, to be used for 100 additional scholarships each year.
In making this tremendous pledge, Shelby said: “UWC provides a unique education to students from across the world independent of their socio-economic means. Each year, UWC national committees identify promising young people in almost 160 countries to attend UWC schools and give them access to an international education they would otherwise never even dare to dream of. We need to equip a new generation to work towards a better world. The Dare to Dream scholarships recognise UWC’s capacity to do that and to bring together students from the most diverse backgrounds from around the globe. I hope it will encourage others to support UWC in eliminating a privileged socio-economic background as a prerequisite for world class education.”
The Dare to Dream scholarships will be granted to UWC’s national committees in recognition of the paramount role they play in enabling UWC to educate students from the most diverse backgrounds. Scholarships will be allocated to national committees successful in fundraising and outreach to diverse pools of candidates.
UWC Robert Bosch College chair Dr. Christof Bosch is delighted about the support: “We are inspired by Shelby Davis’ generosity and by his vision that each year UWC National Committees will identify 100 young people to attend the different schools and colleges, young people who otherwise never even dare to dream of an international education. We are excited that already we know that our College’s first four ‘Dare to Dream’ students will come from Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador and Uruguay. It is especially important to us that these students will be selected from circumstances where otherwise they could not have dared to dream of this opportunity. As the UWC Robert Bosch College Community we pledge to create a welcome for these students, not only for the nationalities and backgrounds that they represent but also mindful that students from less fortunate financial circumstances often do not arrive with perfect academic and language preparation.”
The Dare to Dream programme puts real momentum behind UWC’s strategic goal of ensuring meaningful socio-economic diversity across UWC as set out in the UWC Strategy: 2018 and Beyond, approved in October 2017. For more information about Dare to Dream and what it means for the UWC movement, please visit www.uwc.org/daretodream.
We are overjoyed, humbled, a bit speechless – and, especially, very grateful. Join us in saying THANK YOU to UWC’s wonderful patron Shelby Davis – as our students already did. Have a look here:
