Tullow gives hope to brilliant needy students

Education, no matter the scale, plays a key component in national development. Apart from the individual beneficiaries of higher education, economies stand to gain the more when citizens have access to education for free. Corporate bodies have for decades dedicated portions of their profits to promoting health care and education in less privileged communities. Ghana faces a myriad of problems on its educational front with reports of school dropouts, poor infrastructure, poor supervision and lack of incentives for teachers.

There was a recent media report with the headline “Ghanaian medical students in Cuba developing psychological depression over unpaid allowances.” The story basically talked about an eight-month delay in the release of allowances due the medical students who had been offered scholarships by the government. These stories are almost annual occurrences.

But beneficiaries of Tullow Group’s Scholarship Scheme (TGSS) have more fulfilling stories to share

The Tullow Group Scholarship Scheme

The oil company, which rolled out the scheme in 2011 as part of its numerous corporate social responsibility programmes, has expended more than $10 million to offer fulltime scholarships and stipends to beneficiaries in Ghana. An average of $2.7million is spent on 50 Ghanaian beneficiaries each year. Annually, the TGSS offers 110 full scholarships to citizens of Ghana, Uganda, Gabon, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Cote d’Ivoire, French Guiana and Bangladesh. Notably, 45 per cent of the total number of scholarships goes to Ghana to create a legacy of academic and technical expertise to support particularly the Oil and Gas industry and other non-related oil and gas fields.

The TGSS forms a key part of Tullow Oil plc’s overall approach to education and capacity building to support locals to participate effectively in the oil and gas industry.

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The scheme supports postgraduate degree and technical training to fill industry skill gaps and national capacity development requirements. It also demonstrates Tullow’s commitment to the countries where it operates. Students are obliged to return to Ghana to work upon completion of their studies. Courses offered are Engineering and Technology, Environment and Geosciences, Oil and Gas Economics, Law and Legal courses and other Oil and Gas related courses in Applied Sciences (apart from Medicine).

The following are some of the universities offering the various courses of study: Robert Gordon University (UK), Coventry University (UK), Imperial College (UK), Université d’Angers (France), University of Dijon (France), Newcastle University, University of Dundee, University of Aberdeen, University of Surrey, University of Birmingham , University of Manchester, London School of Economics, Cardiff University , University of Lincoln, Nottingham Trent University, University of Leeds and University of Warwick.
The scheme is managed through a partnership between Tullow and the British Council - an internationally recognised service provider in the area of scholarship management and partnership brokerage in higher education around the world. The British Council has been partnered to ensure independence, transparency and fairness in the selection process.

Message from Charles Darku

“Tullow’s aim of bringing long lasting sustainable growth to the oil and gas sector and the Ghanaian economy as a whole remains unchanged.
The investment in the education sector through the scholarship scheme is designed to distribute some of the benefits from the oil resources through a competitive selection process to positively impact as many Ghanaian households as possible,” Mr Charles Darku, Managing Director of Tullow Ghana, noted and said Tullow Oil Plc would continue to support brilliant students who would eventually support both the human resource and economies of their countries.

Expansion

As a result of the success chalked up by the scheme in the past four years, feedback from Tullow’s various stakeholders, including communities, traditional authorities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media, the scope of the scheme will be broadened to include programmes at the pre-tertiary level to further enhance its impact on the selected countries. The expansion will commence in the 2015/2016 academic year. Under the new plan, five scholarships will be awarded to indigenes of the Western Region to attend the Jubilee Technical Training Centre (JTTC). This programme is targeted at ensuring development of intermediary technical skills tailored at building capacity for the budding industry. It is intended to serve as a pilot for the full roll out of this phase of the scheme in due course.

Testimonies from beneficiaries

Some of the beneficiaries the Daily Graphic spoke to touched on how the scholarship scheme made them realise their dreams of pursuing higher education at no cost and no burden of having to repay.

They narrated how the TGSS positively transformed their lives and that of their dependants. One of the beneficiaries, Yusif Issah, 25, who is from a family of nine, with a retired father and a mother who engages in petty trading, spoke of how he took an aptitude test with 1,000 plus applicants, got shortlisted, interviewed and selected under the TGSS.

“It is the best and has totally changed me and now I have been proven a competent electrical engineer by Gary Wilson of the TTE group in UK who is my internal assessor,” Issah noted, and recounted how a monthly stipend of GHc1,000 made it possible for him to save for other laurels.

Another beneficiary, Josephine Ofei Darko, paid glowing tribute to Tullow Oil Plc for making it possible for her to pursue higher education for free. “Every aspiring young individual has a dream which often never become a reality but for me I had a dream and I have lived that dream. Reading my Masters in Finance and Management at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, where I was adjudged the best business student in the 2012/2013 academic year group was indeed a dream come true. I have been transformed into a well-honed methodical, analytical and very practical professional. All these, however, would never have been possible without the Tullow Oil Scholarship Scheme because I personally could not have afforded the tuition fees, living expenses and all the other associated cost of my course. I even managed to save and in less than a year after school, I am in full employment and for this, I am eternally grateful to Tullow Oil Plc.”

Laudable initiative

Tullow Oil Plc deserves commendation for spending $2.7 million annually on Ghanaian students as scholarships and with the expansion of the scheme, the company will certainly spend more this academic year. This gesture is worth commending, especially on the backdrop of it going the extra mile to fend for the personal needs of beneficiaries in its bid to ensure they excel in their various fields of study. Corporate bodies should emulate Tullow Oil Plc’s gesture to build the human resource capacities to promote development in the selected countries.