Graduation of Bourse Jackie English Language Scholarship Program

Our Founder, Barry Hoffner, traveled to Accra, Ghana to give the commencement speech to graduates of the BT Institute where five our Bourse Jackie English-language scholarship recipients, five young women from four different West African countries, are studying English thanks to Caravan to Class. The BT Institute not only teach courses in English to West Africans but have a number of pre-professional certificate programs for West African students, Hospitality, Graphic Design, Coding, Marketing, Accounting etc.  

One of our scholarship recipients, Aida from Burkina Faso, recited a poem in English in front of a crowd of a few hundred. It brought the house down. Everyone stood on their feet and cheered her powerful and emotional message about social justice for women from West Africa. Aida barely spoke just 3 months ago. Barry was inspired saying,

“It was an amazing experience to have one of our own shine on such a big stage with students from most of the West African countries. Our program is doing exactly what it was designed to do…creating life-changing opportunities for a select group of incredibly capable but in-need women. We could not do this work without the support of our donors who care about providing life-changing opportunities for some incredible and deserving young women from the world’s poorest region.”

Aida has a degree in Biological Sciences and her dream is to work for the World Health Organization. Our bet is that she will! The Bourse Jackie program will be here to support her all the way. We do a lot of work on selecting young women of need and capability and we invest in them until they are launched.