The support package to the beneficiaries - brilliant, needy students - is valued at GHc102,809.

The beneficiaries were selected from among 100 applicants who submitted their proposals to be considered by the foundation.

The foundation was one of the immediate interventions the Asantehene, on ascending the Golden Stool, made to provide financial assistance for brilliant, needy students, particularly those in deprived communities.

Until recently, the scholarship scheme covered only students in the Ashanti Region, but with time, the foundation extended its tentacles across the country, all in its quest to empower the youth through access to quality education.

Event

The Board Chairman of the foundation, Otumfuo’s Hiahene, Nana Professor Oheneba Boakye-Agyei Woahene II, at a short ceremony at his palace at Serwaa Nyarko in the Kumasi metropolis yesterday, presented the package to the beneficiaries.

Present at the ceremony were the Executive Director of the Otumfuo Foundation, Nana Afua Kobi Prempeh, parents of the beneficiaries, as well as some traditional leaders.

Nana Professor Woahene, who supported the foundation financially for students pursuing health-related programmes, underscored the need for Corporate Ghana and philanthropists to make conscious efforts to complement the activities of the government’s STEM initiative.

“STEM is a key strategy towards producing middle-level manpower that will propel the country’s socio-economic development in the near future,” he said.

He lauded the Asantehene for his visionary leadership which, he said had brought development to the people of Asanteman and the country at large.

Commendation

Christabel Yaa Adomako, who is studying Medicine at the University of Ghana (UG), on behalf of her fellow beneficiaries, commended the Asantehene for making it possible for some of them to pursue education to greater heights through the benevolence of his foundation.

“The only assurance we can give the Asantehene is that we will work hard and excel in order to make the Asantehene, ourselves and our parents proud,” she said.

Otumfuo Foundation

The foundation works under five key thematic areas of Education, Health, Water and Sanitation, Entrepreneurship and Culture and Heritage, with the primary objective of enhancing the lives of the poor and disadvantaged by providing various interventions through projects and programmes for the people of Asanteman and Ghana in general.