As the 2025 year begins, and the Grade 12 learners are starting their final year journey in high school, soon they will be writing their half year exams, prelims, and then boom, Grade 12 final examination starts. This article seeks to prepare you for the life after Grade 12 exams. Start now to plan for it. Where are you going to get funding for tertiary education? Will it be NSFAS, a bursary or a scholarship from government or private institutions, family funded studies? It's time to put your best foot forward in class throughout 2025 and position yourself to be able to benefit from the funding options listed above. One of the institutions that have opportunities available to assist some learners in identified schools is none other than the Motsepe Foundation through its Corporate Social Investment (CSI) activities. In general, applying for funding or grants from the Motsepe Foundation involves several steps to ensure that the projects or programs align with the Foundation's focus areas and strategic objectives. For this article, we will focus on the funding for bursaries and scholarships made available to qualifying and deserving learners.
If you are a student doing Grade 12 in 2025 and you are keen on trying your luck with the Motsepe Foundation bursary and scholarship initiative, click on the link below to check if your school is listed. The bursary and scholarship support is only available to students from anchor schools within the chosen districts. Learners are selected based on a strict criterion including academic deservingness and financial need. Learners must perform well to put themselves in a better position to secure a scholarship or bursary. The details of qualification criteria are known to the targeted schools and learners must familiarise themselves with the requirements to qualify. As a learner, work on your posture and position yourself to qualify. This will make it difficult for the decision makers not to select you for this great benefit. You need to have a plan from the beginning and execute it accordingly throughout the year. You will need a lot of discipline to achieve your goals. The Motsepe Foundation’s selection considerations and criteria excludes areas where other organisations, foundations or government programmes are much better positioned or placed to assist. As a result, this assistance is not available to all schools, just when you thought your child will benefit from this, sorry! The list of beneficiaries currently sits at 252 anchor schools, spread across 26 regions in the country. The province with the highest number of beneficiary schools is Gauteng (77), followed by Limpopo (33), KZN (32), Eastern Cape (27), Mpumalanga (26), Northwest (19), free State (18), Northern Cape (16) and Western Cape (4).
Where to Find More Information?
Click here:
https://www.motsepefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Anchor-Schools-2.pdf
The Motsepe Foundation website states that bursary and scholarship recipients receive full non-repayable financial assistance to cover their tuition, accommodation, and study materials.
On-boarding workshops with academic counselling professionals to provide guidance on various themes including time management, study skills, stress management and examination preparation, this is very important for a first-year student. University visits to facilitate in-person meetings between the bursary team and students, including one-on-one and group sessions, guide students as they adjust to campus life and encourage support networks amongst themselves. Tertiary institutions life can be lonely sometimes, hence the formation of WhatsApp Group facilitated by the Motsepe Foundation bursary team to encourage student engagement on academic challenges and strengthens professional and personal networks that can assist them later in their careers. By now, I know that you have been asking yourself about this one - Financial Support. Beneficiaries receives a monthly cash and card allowance for meals, stationery and other personal needs, the allowance operates as a student grant, as many of our students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and use this allowance to support their families as well. Lastly, beneficiaries will receive resources such as laptops and data to access the internet, with the understanding that this will provide a crucial advantage for students to excel at tertiary institutions. After so much support provided, these learners are the luckiest. All they need to do is to get a qualification, get employment or start their own businesses and make South Africa a great nation. Re-invest in nation building activities of one form or another to assist other upcoming learners. Stay close to this website as we will be sharing more other tertiary education funding opportunities from other company’s Corporate Social Investments to provide you with the wider pool to choose from. The future is in your hands, make sure it’s a bright one.
Written by Judith N. Mathebane
