The horror of being thrown out of a class in school, because you hadn’t cleared paying your school fees was to painful an experience for one Denis Gachoki to go through and his struggles propelled him to come up with a bursaries and Scholarships web platform meant to revolutionize the way scholars find and apply for bursaries in the country.
According to Gachoki, by allowing for online application of bursaries, more students across Africa will easily search through a large database of bursaries and apply for them online.
The most frustrating thing about Gachoki’s primary and Secondary education was the number of times he was sent home for school fees. More frustrating, was the long duration he would stay at home as his parents struggled to raise school fees.
The only education support funds known to him was the CDF ( Community Development Fund ) bursary. However, the highest amount the local CDF Committee would issue in bursaries was 2,500Ksh per term; which was quite a small amount to offset the arrears.
Realizing how time consuming the process of finding scholarships and bursaries in Kenya is, he created this platform to help bright needy students to access information on bursaries and scholarships in Kenya. Also, this platform enables students to share their stories and seek support from Well-wishers online.
The platform works simply. A user signs up, completes their profiles then they can search through the database of available scholarships, then they can go ahead and apply by submitting more data about themselves and filling the online forms.
Organizations can see the applicants’ profile to determine the most needy students and track the impact of their bursary funds. There are also alerts on new scholarships and bursaries for students users.
The firm expects to make money by offering premium services such as scholarship applications, writing motivational letters and event partnership with universities and organizations offering scholarships.
