Together with the Olivier Descamps family, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is launching the Olivier Descamps Award in memory of the late EBRD Managing Director.
The EBRD-Olivier Descamps award will fund scholarships for two outstanding students to enter a United World Colleges (UWC) school or college in August/September 2019, says the EBD press release.
The two scholarships of up to £40,000 each, provided by the EBRD and the Descamps family, reflect Mr. Descamps lifelong interest in the EBRD regions.
They are designed to help young people from underprivileged backgrounds and to support families of local EBRD staff members.
The award will be organized in cooperation with UWC International, a not-for-profit global education movement active in over 155 countries worldwide and offering pre-university education to young people between the ages of 15 and 18 years.
EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti said: “Olivier was a living example of all that is best about our Bank, its mission and the people in whose interests we do our work. He made a significant contribution to the success of the Bank, its record of investing in changing lives and its expansion into new regions – for 22 years.
“As Olivier put it himself, he wanted to understand the unknown and to discover new countries and different ways of thinking. He relished doing difficult things in challenging places, driven by his passion for our countries of operation. This is the spirit we would like to nurture by funding a unique educational experience for two talented young people from our countries of operations.”
The program welcomes applicants aged 15-18 years from all of EBRD’s countries of operations. The scholarship is designed to support one EBRD staff member’s dependent and one other child from the region who does not need to be dependent of an EBRD staff member.
