Yel is a 24-year-old business major studying at Arizona State University through The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program. He spent the summer of 2015 interning in his home country as an assistant academic advisor for the Education-USA Program in Juba, where he counseled younger students on pursuing education abroad. MasterCard scholars pose outside while volunteering together MasterCard scholars volunteer together in Phoenix.
“I have helped two students gain admission to Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana through the MasterCard Foundation Scholarship Program," Yel said. "I helped students with assembling required documents, writing and editing essays and preparing for interviews.”
Yel is one of 120 students supported by a grant from The MasterCard Foundation to ASU in 2012 to expand educational opportunities for African students. An additional 150 students will be sponsored through a second phase of this grant, designed to empower students to make a difference in their home countries.
The MasterCard Foundation awarded ASU $22 million to train the next generation of business and engineering leaders from West Africa, in partnership with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. The program will enable 150 Ghanaian undergraduate students to study abroad at ASU for two years. During that time, they will complete their undergraduate degrees as well as an accelerated master’s program.
