The Chirano Sefwiman Foundation Scholarship Scheme (CSFSS) is a community-based scholarship scheme funded mainly by Chirano Gold Mines Limited (CGML). The overall goal of the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation Scholarship Scheme (CSFSS) is to contribute to the overall sustainable development of the Sefwi area, particularly CGML impact communities. Considering the critical role of education in development, CGML, through its Chirano Sefwiman Foundation, is committed to supporting educational scholarships in the impacted communities and paramountcies, hence the Chirano Sefwiman Foundation Scholarship Scheme (CSFSS).

However, in view of the government’s existing Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) and Free SHS policies, which make education free up to the SHS level, this scholarship will provide financial support mainly to education at the tertiary level with emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The scheme offers financial support to those community citizens who are brilliant but needy and wish to further their education and use the knowledge and skills so acquired to give back to their communities. In doing so, the Board shall be guided by the core values of the Foundation and CGML, the main sponsors of the Foundation, namely, transparency, accountability and equity.

Scholarship programs are designed according to the stakeholders’ wishes. Thus, this scholarship scheme is for the benefit of “community citizens” of especially the impact communities who are brilliant but financially needy and willing to further their education and use the knowledge and skills so acquired to give back to their communities.

These administrative rules will govern the administration of the Scheme.

a) The CSFSS will not discriminate among applicants on the basis of age, gender, marital status, race, creed, religion, color, or the presence of any mental, sensory or physical disability. This rule, however, does not prevent CSFSS from making necessary considerations that it believes will help in achieving the letter and spirit of the CSFSS and that of the Foundation.

b) The CSF Scholarship Scheme will be funded mainly from financial contribution from CGML and dividends from the management of such funds. The Foundation will solicit for additional funding from legitimate sources and any legitimate third party, subject to the Board’s approval.

c) Such third-party donors may specify the use of such funds in respect of which category of individuals or disciplines are eligible to receive award from such donations. The above notwithstanding the CSFSS is essentially a community-based scholarship scheme, therefore only applicants located in the specified communities and recognized by the Board as eligible will qualify to receive awards.

d) Unless otherwise stated by a donor, the applicant must be a community citizen, brilliant and needy by the CSFSS standards.

e) Additionally, unless otherwise specified by the donor, the Board shall not disburse funds to any applicant who ceases to meet conditions of the award, e.g. poor academic performance. 

f) Priority will be given to applicants offering to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses as possibly 80% of awardees shall be STEM students while 20% will be for Non- STEM courses or humanities.

g) Change of Courses:
The Scheme will generally not encourage change of course during the tenure of a course unless there is a strong reason to do so ( e.g. the university is no more offering the programme). Under such and similar circumstances, beneficiaries may apply to, and obtain approval from, the Board of Trustees (BoT) before change of course can be effected. 

h) Merit with Equity:
The scholarship award will primarily be merit-based. However, specific provisions shall be made to ensure some level of equity in distribution of awards among various paramount areas is achieved. Therefore, notwithstanding the merit criteria, during every scholarship award session at least one candidate from each of the three (3) paramountcies shall be given an award. 

i) Courses distribution:
Additionally, necessary adjustments shall be made to ensure fair distribution among various disciplines, trades and skills to obtain a good skills mix, especially employable skills and skills in short supply in the relevant districts. 

j) Exclusions:
There shall be exclusions to ensure that the scholarship resources are made available to mainly the brilliant but needy applicants. Therefore, children and dependents of the following categories of people are excluded from the scholarship awards:

• • • workers of CGML and other similar mining companies in the country
    • the three paramount chiefs
    • Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives
    • Members of Parliament
    • Ministers of state
    • Known wealthy people in the area 

k) Multiple Scholarships:
Students on full CSFSS scholarship are forbidden from holding other scholarships and must surrender one of the scholarships anytime they have more than one scholarship. However, those on partial scholarships (those benefiting from the payment of tuition fees only) can hold additional scholarships and /or sponsorship packages. 

l) Conflict of Interest:
Conflict of Interest shall be avoided in all stages of the scholarship application process and award. Conflict of interest is defined as “a situation in which a person in a position of authority uses his/ her position to derive personal benefit from his/ her actions or decisions made in their official capacity”.

m) Dependents of members of Board of Trustees:
Children and/or dependents of members of Board of Trustees and members of the scholarship committee shall not be prohibited from participating in the scholarship awards, however, to avoid conflict of interest, persons who find themselves in such conflict of interest situation, (e.g their wards are participating in the awards competition), shall declare their interest and withdraw from the scholarship application process.

n) Bonding:
All scholarship beneficiaries shall sign a bond of good behaviour including an undertaking to maintain good academic performance. Professionals benefiting from specialized training will sign an additional undertaking to serve the relevant Sefwi district and/or institution for a specified period after completion of studies.

1. Eligibility Criteria:
All applicants must be community citizens and are academically brilliant but are financially needy. Applicants must also exhibit leadership potentials and demonstrate ability to be able to complete the programme for which they are being sponsored.

2. Qualifying Criterion:
Community citizenship is a qualifying criterion and only community citizens are eligible to apply for the scholarship. Persons who do not qualify as community citizens need not apply as their applications will not be processed. 

3. College Admission:
Only applicants with valid admission letters to tertiary institutions in Ghana are eligible to apply for CSF Community Scholarship.

4. Preference for STEM:
Applicants must be willing to study science and science related programmes as preference will be given to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) students. STEM includes vocational and technical courses both in formal vocational and technical schools and in especially arranged training programmes by the mines and credible NGOs. In selecting candidates for such vocational and technical training courses, the selection committee has a lot of latitude and flexibility except that emphasis should be placed more on employability and entrepreneurship than on academic brilliance.

5. Validation of citizenship:
There shall be validation of each applicant’s citizenship status at the community level before submission of the application forms.

6. Validation and Evaluation of other Criteria:
Academic brilliance, needy status and leadership status shall be evaluated at the interview stage.

7. Falsification of Documents & False Presentations:
The scholarship authorities reserve the right to terminate the application process or withdraw any scholarship award based on false presentations or documents.

1. Community citizenship:
Community citizenship shall be defined as:

• • • A person who hails from the community, an indigene of the community
    • A person whose parent(s) is/are indigenes of the community
    • A person who is not an indigene but has lived in the community of interest for more than 15 years and whose parents have immovable property (other than farms and farmlands) and contributes to community development.

For purposes of seeking CSF Scholarship, the evidence of a community citizenship is a duly completed citizenship validation form that bears the signature and/or stamp of any two (2) of the dully accredited signatories as listed below:

• • • Local chief (odikro)
    • Assemblyman
    • Recognized youth leader, or
    • Unit Committee member.

The applicant shall fill the application form and declare his/her community citizenship status and this shall be validated by any two of the impact community leaders listed above. The community level validation shall be guided by the community citizenship definition. The citizenship validation shall be verified by the scholarship committee through a signature album developed for the purpose.

The Board shall not process any application forms not validated for community citizenship. However, the Board or its appropriate committee, shall not be held responsible for wrongfully citizenship validation nor shall any award based on the wrongful citizen validation be invalidated.

Even though community citizenship is a criterion, no marks shall be awarded for community citizenship criteria since it is only a qualifying criterion; either one is a citizen or not a citizen.

2. Academic Brilliance:
Academic Brilliance as a criterion shall be evaluated. An applicant is judged academically brilliant if:

• • • The applicant scored aggregates 12 or better in 6 relevant subjects (3 relevant core subjects and 3 elective core subjects) at the West African Examination Council SHS Certificate Examination (WASSCE) (i.e. Three core subjects English Mathematics and Integrated Science and any three relevant elective subjects).
    • However, girls and students from less endowed schools, who score aggregates up to 18 in the three relevant core subjects and 3 relevant elective subjects are considered academically brilliant.

3. Financially Needy Status:
Financially needy children are those who will otherwise not be able to access tertiary education without external financial support. It is generally difficult to provide a concise definition or identity of needy children, especially in an environment where the determination of people’s total income is difficult because of the largely informal nature of the local economy.

The financially needy status shall be assessed at an interview and a judgement made as to whether the applicant is not needy, needy, or extremely needy.

Evaluation of the needy criteria shall be done at an interview. The evaluation of this criteria may contain elements of subjectivity and therefore, where there are wide disparities between panelists score of an applicant, the panelists shall interrogate the scores and narrow their differences. For example, if for the same applicant one panelist evaluates him as not needy while another evaluates him as extremely needy, the basis of each panelist’s judgement must be interrogated to narrow the differences in their understanding and categorization.

Financially needy children may have some or all of these characteristics. The more of these characteristics a child has, the needier he/she is likely to be.

As far as possible, documentary evidence must be provided to support the financially needy claim: e.g parent’s burial certificate of orphaned children, SSNIT retirement certificate/ letter for retired parents, salary slips of pensioners etc.

The needy child characteristics are:

• • • Children of peasant farmers
    • Children who are orphans,
    • Children who have single parent, usually the mother
    • Children are usually reserved and timid
    • Children from broken homes resulting especially from divorce
    • Children with many siblings
    • The girl children from a typical Muslim background where preference may be given to the boy child
    • Children who normally attend public basic school, unless they had third party sponsorship for private basic school.

 After the interview needy applicants will be classified into

• • • Not a needy student therefore does not need assistance
    • Needy student needs assistance and may be supported
    • Extremely needy student needs assistance and must be supported

 4. Leadership:
Leadership potential is important criteria and applicants with a high sense of commitment, show diligence in completing tasks, strong work ethics and commitment to his/her chosen field of study will be considered highly. Applicants who have held leadership positions in previous schools attended shall be deemed to possess leadership qualities. Additionally, sense of responsibility, ability to overcome challenges, creativity and involvement in extra curricula activities in sports, community activities, voluntary activities, etc. shall be used as proxy for leadership talents and the interview panelists should tease these out of applicants.

5. STEM Courses:
STEM is acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The STEM courses include vocational and technical courses.

• • • Science – Physical and biological sciences, excluding social sciences.
    • Technology – Applied science, including Artificial intelligence, Robotics, Computer and ICT studies, technical and vocational studies.
    • Engineering – All fields of Engineering including but not limited to mechanical, geological, civil, electronic and electrical engineering, telecommunication engineering.
    • Mathematics – Mathematics and Statistics including Mathematical sciences.
    • STEM will also include science education (subject methodology) for effective teaching of science and mathematics in schools and colleges.

 6. Types of Assistance Offered / Awarded:
There shall be three (3) types of awards. Scholarship covering the payments of:

• • • Partial scholarship
    • Full scholarship including tuition fees and accommodation.
    • Full scholarship plus including tuition, accommodation and stipend for extremely needy students who without the payment of stipends cannot assess the scholarship awarded. This shall be the exception and shall cover only a few cases.

Application closed for 2025.