Fundraising

During this week only, The Open University is running an online giving appeal to help fund OU students through the Access to Success Route.

We’re looking to our supporters to dig deep and make a donation this week, which will be DOUBLED thanks to a matching gift from our Pro-Chancellor, Lord Haskins.*

To make your matched donation, visit our secure online giving site at www.open.ac.uk/donatenow any time from now until 10pm this Friday, 30th November 2012.

In fact, if you are a UK taxpayer, a gift of £10.00 could be worth £25.00 to us, with the help of Gift Aid and matched funding – but only if it’s received before 10pm on Friday.

If you are a staff member and would like to set up a monthly donation through payroll, please download our payroll giving form. (Please note payroll donations will not be matched).

*Lord Haskins will match donations up to a value of £4,000.

The impact your donations made in 2011
Last year, 8,500 people and organisations chose to make a donation to The Open University, giving a total of £2.8 million. These donors are alumni, students, staff and friends who all believe in the power of education.

Donations have helped us achieve so much already, and with your support we’ve managed to help 2700 students in England take their first steps into higher education through our new Access to Success Route. However, we need your support now more than ever so we can continue to offer a life-changing education to all those who need us. Two two cohorts of Access to Success students started their studies in September and November. We are now recruiting for March and June 2013, so we are working hard to ensure this funding is available all year round.

OU student, Kerry Nichols is one student who has received financial support for her studies.

She tells Platform what it was like for her.

The University also supports other areas, from transforming teacher and healthcare education in Africa, to increasing our services for disabled students. To read more about the other areas we are fundraising for please visit our giving website.

About the Access to Success Route
The OU’s new Access to Success Route supports students taking their first step into higher education.

This new route was set up this year as a result of funding changes for students in England to offer a low-risk, low-entry route into HE for students to develop their skills and confidence before hopefully carrying on to complete one of our nationally-recognised qualifications. Whilst most new students will have access to student loans, Open University students who want to take their first steps into higher education by signing up for one of our taster 'Openings’ modules will not be eligible for any form of Government support.

The Access to Success Route is available to students living in England that have a household income of less than £25,000 and have little or no previous experience of higher education. The University has developed this new route to provide students with the opportunity to develop the skills and confidence they need to study at HE level before taking out a loan and embarking on an OU degree course.

What’s involved?
The Access to Success Route is a two-step process:

Step 1 – offers the student the opportunity to begin studying with a heavily subsided Openings module* (Student makes a £25 contribution to the cost of the course). If the student completes and passes this module, they earn 15 credits at OU level 1 and have the opportunity to move onto step 2.

Step 2 – The student makes a contribution of £50 towards a 60-credit module (or two 30 credit modules) in a subject relevant to their chosen qualification. If they complete and pass this step, they earn 60 credits at OU level 1. These credits count towards a nationally recognised OU qualification.

* The usual cost of an Openings module is £625
* The usual cost of a 60 credit level 1 module is £2,500

Please help us to continue this support for future students. To donate now, visit our secure online giving site.

To read more about this unique offering, visit our Access to Success page.

 

Funding for future students at the OU has received a boost following the recent telephone campaign which raised £86,000.*

Generous donations were made by alumni to support a variety of OU projects including the Access to Success fund, Disabled Student Services (DSS) and TESSA.

The calling team who were local to Milton Keynes were made up of OU staff, students and alumni. Louise Liston, campaign manager says:

"I am so proud of our callers and the positive response we have had from our alumni on the telephone. Not only are people so generous at this time but we're hearing some wonderful stories about their experiences of studying with us."

Find out more:

• An interview with a caller
• Why support the OU

 

* £86,000 is the projected income from pledged donations over 2 years with gift aid.

 

In the same week International Women’s Day was marked the OU Teacher in Education in Sub Saharan Africca (TESSA) Access to Teaching Scholarship programme in Malawi has been named one of the 50 Ideas and Solutions Improving the Lives of Girls and Women Worldwide, by the global advocacy organisation ‘Women Deliver’ in the Educational Initiatives category.

Access to Teaching Scholarship was nominated because of the impact it has had on girls and women in Malawi where it recruits women to become teachers in their own rural communities.

This is badly needed as the World Bank has estimated that the current supply of teachers in Malawi cannot meet rising educational demands.

Female teachers are particularly scarce, of all teachers in the country, only 38% are female and in rural areas the number is even smaller.

The Access to Teaching Scholarship programme addresses this gap by facilitating Learning Assistant roles in schools for scholarship recipients and assisting women to re-take secondary school exams, a requirement for admittance to teacher education programs.

This innovative model of work-based learning addresses barriers to female continuing education and chronic teacher shortages.

The scholarship offers rural women a chance to develop teaching skills while providing young girls with local role models.

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child–but it takes just one dedicated female teacher to inspire a whole classroom full of young girls.

Find out more:

• Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Afric (TESSA)
• Environment, Development and International qualifications at the OU