Oxford University scholarship for black Britons launched

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Arlan Hamilton, the founder of Backstage Capital, is to fund the University of Oxford’s first dedicated scholarship for disadvantaged black British students, writes Richard Adams for The Guardian.

The Oxford-Arlan Hamilton and Earline Butler Sims scholarship, named in part as a living tribute to Hamilton’s mother, will be open to UK undergraduates of black African and Caribbean heritage who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Backstage Capital, which specialises in supporting start-ups by overlooked groups, is to donate more than £200,000 (US$263,000) to establish the fund and pay the tuition fees and living expenses for a three-year undergraduate degree.

“I just really want someone who didn’t, or wouldn’t, have had the opportunity to go to this university, to do so. I want them to be truly nurtured and able to focus on themselves, instead of worrying about the things that, perhaps, I have had to worry about in the past – like how you are going to pay your rent,” Hamilton said after announcing the scholarship.
Full report on The Guardian site