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May 2018 update from the MRF

Foundation News

May 2018 update from the MRF

Published 22 May 2018

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The Leverhulme Mandela Rhodes Doctoral Scholars 2018

This year’s field was very large and very strong and it was an extremely difficult task for the Selection Committee to eventually award the annual Leverhulme Mandela Rhodes Scholarships to two out of the five excellent candidates who made the final interview. Warm congratulations to Anton Botha (SA & NMMU 2008), whose proposed field of PhD study is Psychological Resilience in UN Peacekeeping, and Richard Burman (SA & UCT 2015), who plans to do a PhD in Clinical Neurosciences at Oxford.

Latest MRF Yearbook

I am pleased to tell you that the latest MRF Yearbook is very close to completion. Edited this year largely by Julia Brown, with the assistance of the rest of the MRF team, it is another example of the conscious sharing of skills and transferring of institutional knowledge to which we are committed at the Foundation. We will let you know as soon as the Yearbook – which has been published faithfully and without fail since the inception of the Scholarships Programme – will be made available. As is tradition, as well as serving the governance purposes of an Annual Report, it celebrates the cohort from the year under review (the Class of 2017), and introduces the newest cohort (the Class of 2018).

A very busy 5thfloor in the Mandela Rhodes Building

There has been much activity on the 5thfloor, the home of the Deputy Executive Director and the Scholarships team. The DED reports that the Mentoring Programme is well under way, Regional Pods have been held successfully, there’s much energy being put into Alumni relations (especially the imminent launch of the Alumni magazine and the Class Giving campaign; the latter also involving the election of Class leaders), and plans for the July Mid-year Workshop are admirably advanced.

Applications and selections 2019

This year’s call for applications yielded 7,500 expressions of interest, with a final number of close to 1,000 eligible applications. The four-step selection process for the Class of 2019 is currently in round one, with universities and volunteer Alumni again serving as reviewers.

The 100 for the 100thcelebrations

Our Project Lead Judy says ‘plans for the centenary events in July are progressing excellently. In addition to organising the MRF specific activities happening on the 13thand 14thJuly, the MRF is also participating in conversations and committees with organisations such as The Nelson Mandela Foundation, The Graça Machel Trust, and The Elders.’

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