The School of Applied Microfinance, in conjunction with the MasterCard Foundation is pleased to announce the awardees of the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program for 2008.

The MasterCard Foundation is an independent, private charitable foundation, based in Toronto, Canada. The foundation provides funds for programming in the areas of microfinance and youth education. Their goal is to help create opportunities for people to harness their own skills and resources. The MasterCard Foundation works to broaden access to the global economy through establishing, funding and supporting innovative microfinance programs, and by increasing access to quality educational opportunities. This includes the provision of scholarships, bursaries and grants for educational purposes, in accordance with its focus on microfinance capacity building.

More specifically, The MasterCard Foundation has created the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program. The main purpose of this program is to provide scholarship funds for people who are active in micro-finance and who are seeking further training, but who could not otherwise afford to attend courses at leading microfinance training institutions. The scholarship fund is administered through selected institutions, one of them being the School of Applied Microfinance.

Through sam, the program had a record number of strong applicants from 25 countries across the world. We congratulate the scholarship recipients.

The awards were in 3 categories, and the winners are as follows:

Thank you for your interest in the School of Applied Microfinance and the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program.