In June, we gave these 10 families the good news that their children  would become scholars in 2022. The photo shows the group at their induction meeting

Carolina Righi

General Manager of the St. Paul’s Foundation

Hard work and celebrations

My arrival at the St Paul’s Foundation coincided with the start of the school year, and I quickly realised the scope of my challenge. I had been used to working on projects and realised we were going to have to structure ourselves to receive a large number of scholars… There were ten of them on their way.

We had nine scholars returning to lessons at school with Covid restrictions still in place, 17 candidates beginning the preparation course, and a new selection process for the 2022-23 intake about to start.

We also had the first scholar-parent integration meeting; we visited dozens of institutions in search of suitable candidates for the 2022-23 selection process; we reviewed more than 180 applications and tested 80 candidates in a single day. All this was happening while we ran the Preparation Course with lessons at school three times weekly. As part of the Preparation Course, we hired a social worker who visited the families to analyse each candidate’s socio-economic circumstances. Additionally, we re-launched the programme of events designed to raise awareness of the Foundation within the community.

Before I knew it, we were ready to award ten new scholarships as well as selecting 20 candidates for the preparation course the following academic year. We were thrilled to see our first scholar, the famous JP, graduate from school, and realise his dream of studying abroad.

We worked hard throughout the year to fine-tune our systems, support new scholars, scholarship candidates and scholars’ parents while keeping in focus our mission of transforming the lives of these brilliant, hard-working young people through education.

It is inspiring to see the number of scholars increasing year by year. In the first photo, you see the 2020-21 scholars. Below, you see the 2021-22 scholars

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