STUDENTS will have access to bursaries worth more than R1bn at the click of a button when a new mobile application (app) launches on Monday.
The app was developed by Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University alumni.
Punted as a “bursary matching web app” for school leavers and undergraduate students, the smartphone application is designed to help students sift through thousands of bursaries on offer throughout the country in less than a tenth of the time it would usually take.
The operations manager for SAScholar app, Tafadzwa Kachara, said the idea for the app stemmed from his struggle to find a bursary to study for his Bachelor of Science undergraduate degree in biochemistry and microbiology. “For undergraduate qualifications there are a lot of funding opportunities but it is difficult to get your hands on them,” Kachara said.
Kachara and his former flatmate, Blessing Jonamu, who was studying towards a Master’s degree in computer science at the time, painstakingly created a database, which includes more than 7,000 bursaries across SA, available to nearly every university country-wide. The total value of the bursaries available through SAScholar app adds up to more than R1bn.
Kachara said SAScholar app was designed in such a way that students would be able create a profile, including their age and the qualification for which they wanted to study.
The app would then sift through SAScholar’s database and provide those results that were applicable and unique to that specific scholar.
It allowed users to save details of the bursaries they were interested in and would send notifications when their saved bursaries were about to reach their deadline date, he said.
source bdlive.co.za