Ashesi University College is happy to announce that two students from the Class of 2012 have been selected as Dalai Lama Fellows. Dennis Asamoah Owusu '12 and Alberta Boateng '12, Computer Science and Management Information Systems majors respectively, were selected from a highly competitive field of applicants to receive the prize. Dalai Lama Fellows are awarded yearlong Fellowships with a project grant of up to USD$10,000 to support a project of their design that helps alleviate poverty or promotes peace in the world.
Dennis and Alberta's project, Clickonate Mobile, promotes charitable giving to the most vulnerable members of society through the power of mobile advertising. Mobile phone subscribers peruse advertisements and answer questions about them and for each question answered advertisers make payments to selected charities. To help implement the project, Dennis and Alberta have formed a team with their classmates, Diana Akrong '12, Ivan Digber '12 and Kwame Afram '12. The first charity to be enrolled is the Leper’s Aid Committee chaired by Father Andrew Campbell. With a large percentage of Ghanaians using mobile phones, this project has the potential to create a sustainable income stream for important local charities.
With personal authorization from His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama Fellows encourages a new generation of emerging leaders to address some of our most pressing global challenges while advancing in them a deeper understanding of the need for ethical awareness and inner values as essential components of effective social change leadership.
Ashesi University is part of an exclusive list of international campuses that participate in the Dalai Lama Fellows programme - a list that includes universities like Stanford, Oberlin and Princeton. "This is a great opportunity to make our vision of reducing poverty come alive," said Alberta. "The Dalai Lama Fellowship is an awesome project, and we are excited to be a part of it."
Dalai Lama Fellows includes three interconnected components: a meticulous selection process to identify promising Fellows at select universities; ongoing, personalized support from program officers and outstanding experts in their fields to equip Fellows with new understandings and capabilities; and lifelong participation by all Fellows in a Global Learning Community that will strengthen each individual’s capacity to lead, while fostering a sense of collective global responsibility, service and action. [Read more about the Dalai Lama Fellows]
Click Here to read full 2012/2013 Dalai Lama Fellows Announcement 