In 2018, Uzair Adams, Regional Director of our Cape Town office received the Ashley Kriel Scholarship for Leadership in Community Development which enabled him to enrol for a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Community Development via the Cornerstone Institute.
The Community Chest and Cornerstone Institute, founding partners of this scholarship, believe that leadership in community development is fundamentally rooted in the identity of the countless South Africans who have made the ultimate sacrifice towards the establishment of a non-racial, non-sexist democratic South Africa. It is against this backdrop that the Ashley Kriel Scholarship for Leadership in Community Development was launched.
The Ashley Kriel Scholarship for Leadership in Community Development has the following strategic objectives:
- Build a cadre of engaging and critical leadership within the emerging structures of organised civil society.
- Improve the governance and accountability mechanisms within organised civil society.
- Strengthen the organisational capacity of organised civil society to coordinate social development programmes within a human rights framework as set out in the South African Constitution and Bill of Rights.
- Strengthen the organisational capacity of civil society leadership and management structures to respond to the challenges inherent in contemporary resource mobilisation demands.
- Build an active, responsive and applied research programme that advances collective understanding of the sector and facilitates programme innovation, scale and replicability.
On 5 December 2020, after what was a tumultuous year navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with the shift to both remote and online working and learning platforms, Uzair graduated with distinction and at the top of his class. He is grateful for both the opportunity and the experience gained and looks forward to making a positive contribution to society at large.
