Rural Great Minds Scholarships

About The Founder - Annet NAKKAZI

Annet grew up in a small village in Kyotera District, Uganda. She received a scholarship to pursue her bachelor’s degree at the University of Tsukuba (Japan), and upon graduation she moved to the UK and entered the University of Oxford, for her master’s degree. After graduating from Oxford, she lectured at Uganda Christian University (Uganda) for one year, before continuing her studies, this time in the PhD program at the University of Manchester (UK).

Annet is passionate about promoting quality education, general health and cancer awareness, especially in rural areas. Having grown up where school fees were a challenge for many students and financial rewards uncommon, Annet knows how energising it is to reward talented, hard-working pupils from a young age. It is also beneficial for them to become familiar with the existence of scholarships/awards, while reflecting on how they have achieved them.

How it Started

Despite having a big passion for cancer research, Annet is very attracted to promoting quality education, especially in village Ugandan schools. In 2020, she organised a successful fundraising for a certain rural primary school she had visited in 2019. After, she created "Empower and Inspire with Annet", an facebook initiative to share personal views about education and what she does with the donations she receives from various people.

After realising fundraisings cannot be organised all the time, Annet and her friend decided to start a youtube channel dubbed, AnnetMaya, where she shares experiences of studying abroad and great opportunities regarding education. Great thanks for your support on youtube, we recently got monetised on our channel, and thus launched the RGM scholarships.

Beyond Scholarships

Apart from promoting education and leadership skills, we also donate a variety of things, including playing materials, such as balls, which not only promotes physical health, but also teamwork and interpersonal skills among pupils. Teaching pupils the importance of protecting our environment at a young age is another mission, thus we donate fruit trees and vegetable seeds that are planted and taken care of by pupils while at school. Hygiene is another factor in preventing a variety of diseases/infections in rural areas, therefore, we donate hand washing facilities, water tanks, desks and renovate classes, depending on the condition of the target primary school. Very soon, we intend to add in activities that can boost pupils' creativity, and these will include; drawing, poetry, and song composing competitions etc.