Barclays Bank Ghana Limited has launched its Barclays Tertiary Awards at a ceremony held at the University. 聽 The award seeks to provide financial support in the form of scholarships to deserving students to go through their tertiary education without any financial difficulty. It was for this reason that Barclays after a thorough selection procedure selected 20 students based on their academic performances. They were given a laptop computer each to facilitate their academic work. 聽 Explaining the rationale behind the awards, the Head of Communications of the Bank, Mr. Cyril Nai said time was changing very fast, therefore, there was the need for students to get training that would help them to achieve their aims in order to help in nation building. 聽 鈥淭he growth of young people who are our stakeholders is dear to our heart. Due to this we will use our resources to support them to become better, because when they improve we also improve鈥�, he said. 聽 According to Mr. Nai, as per their shared growth strategy, 鈥渨e use our resources to help solve problems so in doing this we are trying to help solve the unemployment problems in our society. 鈥淚n view of this, we look at education and skills development, enterprise development and financial inclusion as some of the solutions to these problems鈥�. 聽 Mr. Nai said education and skills without good talent would not inure to the benefit of students. 鈥淓ducation and skills without any relevant talent will not help you to achieve anything. Most often, we hear industry people say graduates do not have the requisite training to perform. That is why we have set up an online platform, that is 鈥淩eady to work鈥� to help train you for the world of work鈥�, he stressed.聽 鈥淲e have gone into scholarships to help students get the right training and skills to be useful in the society鈥�. 聽 He said the Bank would not want graduates to join the bandwagon of unemployed graduates so the awardees would be mentored at the work place and also training programmes would be organized for them even after their education. 鈥淵ou need all these soft skills to be ahead of your peers, you need this added advantage鈥�, he noted. 聽 Addressing the gathering the Pro Vice-Chancellor, Prof. George K. T. Oduro, said funding had become a huge challenge all over the world, so the developed world was using alternative means to help train people. On the contrary, in the developing world and especially in Africa, he said brilliant people fail to get good education due to financial difficulties. It was for that matter that the effort by the Bank to help in the training of such people was commendable and must be supported for it to grow to benefit many others. 聽 鈥淏arclays has paid for your tuition fees and added some extra for your stipend so they need to be appreciated鈥�, he said. 聽 Prof. Oduro said though government continue to subsidize the tuition fees of students, there were other commitments to cater for. For this reason, he said there was the need for others to intervene and provide the needed support by emulating Barclays Bank. He told the beneficiaries that the sustenance of the programme depended only on their efforts and therefore called on them to be good ambassadors of the Bank. 聽 鈥淏arclays will be happy if you become successful in your endeavours by setting up your own businesses鈥�. 聽 Prof. Oduro urged the beneficiaries to put the laptop computers given to them to good use and also take good care of the devices. 聽 Concluding his remarks, he appealed to the Bank to consider providing financial support to a female student who thought of quitting her education at the university and also contemplated committing suicide. 聽 聽
