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Tendai Rupapa –Senior Reporter

First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa, through her Angel of Hope Foundation is supporting intelligent, but underprivileged boys and girls from the country’s provinces with scholarships as she forges ahead with her empowerment drive.

The gesture has opened doors for learners who might not have had an opportunity to study even at a prestigious school like Prince Edward School.

Her scholarships programme at Prince Edward started during her tenure as Chirumhanzu-Zibagwe legislator.

There, she also started empowerment projects for women in the constituency including mukando which saw women being able to build houses and send their children to school.

Some of the beneficiaries are now at university.

Amai Mnangagwa has a passion for uplifting pupils from humble backgrounds such that when she launched her Angel of Hope Foundation, she continued with her scholarships programme.

Prince Edward School headmaster Dr Agrippa Sora expressed gratitude for the support given to the pupils and his school by the First Lady.

“Since inception of the scholarship programme, all the beneficiaries were good ambassadors in terms of discipline and hard work. 

“Prince Edward School is proud to be associated with the Angel of Hope Foundation and eagerly awaits more Form 1 beneficiaries of the First Lady’s programme coming in 2021. This scholarship programme has assisted in ensuring the boy child is also supported so as to complement all initiatives to support the girl child,” he said.

Since assuming office, the First Lady has been touching lives of many by seeing to it that children had access to education.

In 2019, at least 100 secondary pupils benefited from her scholarship programme covering girls from different communities in all the country’s 10 provinces.

Amai Mnangagwa revealed the scholarships during the official opening of the National Girls Camp at Lake Chivero which she organised through her Angel of Hope Foundation that her scholarships sought to stem the surge in child marriages and ensure children had access to education.

Her intervention comes at a time when most underprivileged families marry-off daughters of school-going age after failing to cater for their education exposing them to serious health challenges and abuse.

Last year she also paid fees for over 200 pupils from Maypark and Simukai primary schools in Zvimba and Seke districts.

Most pupils from the Doma community in Kanyemba are also beneficiaries of the Angel of Hope Foundation’s scholarship programme.

Also in a bid to reduce cases of children dropping out of school due to hunger which affects their health and concentration, the First Lady introduced the school feeding scheme countrywide.

So committed to the education of the poor is the First Lady that she has partnered various organisations to transform Chambuta Children’s Home in Chiredzi into a vocational training centre.

So far children who were living and working on the streets are living at Chambuta where they are attending school and being imparted with vocational skills.

Through her foundation she is also in the middle of building a state-of-the-art skills centre in Tynwald North Harare for the benefit of the underprivileged countrywide.