Equity, Co-op and KCB spend billions on students’ fees

What you need to know:

Co-op Bank on Thursday said it will this year award 655 disadvantaged students with four-year secondary school scholarships, just like rival lenders Equity and KCB.
The initiatives by Co-op, Equity and KCB cover school fees for four years as well as uniforms, stationery, toiletries and pocket money.
Kenya’s blue chip companies have taken to setting up charitable foundations through which they channel funds for CSR activities, mostly targeting education, agribusiness, healthcare and entrepreneurship.

Co-operative Bank will spend more than Sh100 million to pay school fees for needy high school students next month, joining a list of other listed firms, mostly commercial banks, in copycat corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

Co-op Bank on Thursday said it will this year award 655 disadvantaged students with four-year secondary school scholarships, just like rival lenders Equity and KCB.

President Uhuru Kenyatta is Friday expected to preside over Equity Bank’s Wings to Fly programme that will see the lender finance secondary school education for 2,000 learners.

The Wings to Fly project is a Sh9 billion ($101 million) kitty with the backing of other players such as the MasterCard Foundation, USAid, UKaid and the German Reconstruction Bank (KfW).

KCB will spend Sh100 million to sponsor 238 students from poor backgrounds who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations last year.

The initiatives by Co-op, Equity and KCB cover school fees for four years as well as uniforms, stationery, toiletries and pocket money.

Co-op Bank Group CEO Gideon Muriuki said school fees makes up one of the biggest expenditures in any household, hence the urge for companies to step in.

“Education is one of the most expensive items in any household budget and yet has the highest potential to liberate people from poverty,” said Mr Muriuki in a statement.

READ: Co-op bank to give 655 scholarships to needy Form 1 students

He added: “Unless corporate institutions and all people of goodwill come together to support initiatives within the education sector, brilliant but poor Kenyans will never realise their full potential.”

Kenya’s blue chip companies have taken to setting up charitable foundations through which they channel funds for CSR activities, mostly targeting education, agribusiness, healthcare and entrepreneurship.

The Co-op Bank Foundation that was started in 2007 will have sponsored 3,472 after taking on this year’s beneficiaries.

Equity’s Wings to Fly scholarship programme has so far sponsored 10,377 learners since it was established in 2010.

Equity Group Foundation said it received a total of 20,300 applications from needy students who sat for KCPE last year, a pointer to the big number of disadvantaged learners seeking opportunities.

“As a country we need to come together and find ways of arresting this situation. These are the brains that the country needs to nurture for the future of our nation,” said Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi.

Since inception of the KCB scholarship scheme in 2011, more than 500 students have benefitted.

Eligibility to these scholarships is subject to students meeting the set cut-off points as well as demonstrated financial need.

The minimum marks for eligibility for candidates to the Equity Bank scheme is 350 marks while it varies for Co-op and KCB depending on performance of each county.

Co-op Bank awards five scholarships per county and the rest are determined by regional delegates.

“Our students are selected at the grassroots level by co-operative societies across the country through a well-established national delegates system,” said Mr Muriuki.

KCB tailors the cut-off marks depending on the performance in each devolved unit.

“In each of Kenya’s 47 counties, a cut-off point for the scholarship has been set based on the overall KCPE performance for the year. This ensures students from poor performing counties access scholarships too,” KCB said in a statement.