Etayi to set up education fund
By Marx Itamalo
SCHOOL going pupils and youths from Etayi constituency in Omusati region, are poised to benefit from an education trust fund that will be set up in the near future. This is according to the constituency councillor Hans Haikali.
The trust fund will assist pupils and youths from disadvantaged backgrounds, Haikali told Confidente this week.
Apart from those from vulnerable backgrounds, gifted pupils and youth from the constituency are also set to benefit.
“The fund will be set up soon and it will cater for the aforementioned groups. We thought hard about the hardships that many of our pupils and youths in the constituency face especially when it comes to securing money to further their studies.
Therefore, we came up with the idea to establish or set up trust to assist those that find themselves in difficult financial situations,” he said.
Haikali stated that the constituency will consult the Omusati regional council in order to present their idea and get the blessings of the council. “On our part we are done with the paperwork. We only need to inform the regional council. We want to start as soon as possible because we want the pupils and our youths to start benefiting as soon as possible.
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He narrated that they will approach businesses, local and national, state owned enterprises as well as corporate companies and embassies to partner with them in order to make their dream a reality.
“We plan to partner up with many entities in this project. We will approach businesses and other stakeholders in order to successfully execute our plan for the Namibian child to benefit.”
Haikali pointed out that after the trust gets operational, a mentoring programme will also be launched, whereby unemployed graduates from the constituency, who have attended tertiary institutions, will provide career counselling to school going pupils and youth in the constituency in order to give them proper career guidance on the different fields of study available in the country and beyond.
“The reality is that many people go into areas of study that they do not know about well. That is why we find people changing courses or getting frustrated later in their areas of study. This is mostly because people were never properly sensitised on their chosen areas. The establishment of such a programme will solve the problem in our constituency,” said Haikali adding that the mentors will work on voluntary basis.
The education trust fund will have a board of trustees chaired by Haikali as regional councillor and deputised by Hans Shikongo, the inspector of education in Etayi circuit, among others.