![]() |
life.empowered.living.enhanced
Ad astra per aspera |
Mirnova Foundation |
|
How the Scholarship Program works
Our work in Mirnova Foundation is focused upon two closely-coupled activities by which we serve youth, families, and society. They are really like "obverse and reverse" of a coin, they work together:
Utøya Life Scholarship
Sāngāng Wŭcháng focuses on youth and young adults from different nations and countries. We concentrate program opportunities and offerings (such as arrangements for internships and sabbaticals) upon these four broad areas:
This activity of our Foundation creates opportunities, ets up relationships with mentors, with sponsors, with institrutions that can trake on interns and apprentices. Then the Scholarship part of our work is what enables the selection and support of the awardees.
We emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) but also we promote the inclusion of and attention to the fine arts in relation to the STEM (thus, in the vernacular of the day, "STEAM"). We also emphasize team-building, collaboration, and creative international co-education and relation-building among students of different nations and cultures. (See below for more information.)
Utøya Life Scholarship serves individuals of unique merit, talent and potential, persons who have also endured special difficulties, hardships, disparities and trauma in life. We give them new opportunities that many might have previously felt will be out of reach.
This is a scholarship program that is different from many or indeed most ever created before. It is designed to provide the Unexpected and Surprising, to deserving persons, in positive and fulfilling ways. It offers new opportunities for study, for travel, for doing a scientific investigation or experiment, a creation of art, music, drama or film. It provides opportunities for someone to interact and work as an intern, perhaps, with a university, a hospital, a research institute, or a company.
Everything in our approach and the rationale, the raison d'etre, for Mirnova Foundation, is all about People, Community, Society, and Life. We want to help persons - youth and also adults - who have the energy, the talents, the gifts of God and their families, for being creators, achievers, makers, sustainers, in our society, but who have themselves been cut short and held back in their lives, in their studies and careers, because of one thing or another among unfortunate happenings, ranging from abuses and terrifying experiences done to and around them, to adversities of fate in finance, in accidents, in other circumstances.
The Scholarship - is named in honor and memory of many children and adults, and their families, who suffered the most ungoldly and terrible loss of life in a moment of utter madness, when one individual took the lives of 77 persons, most of them children, and caused 275 injuries, in two terrorist attacks, one in Oslo at the Regjeringskvartalet (governmental executive complex) and at a youth camp on Utøya Island in Tyrifjorden, Viken (Norway).
We cannot bring back the departed. We can remember, but we believe that conventional memorials, good and important as they are, will never be enough. Action that ennobles, enlives, empowers, and leads us Forward into ways of living that help to prevent such deeds and consequences - this is also important.
§ We focus on youth and young adults from different nations and countries. We concentrate program opportunities and offerings (such as arrangements for internships and sabbaticals) upon these four broad areas:
§ Our awards are of flexible amounts in terms of cash disbursements and often the award is in the form of special arrangements (services, waivers and discounts in fees, etc.) with schools, universities and corporations, with respect to tuitions and other fees (e.g., lodging, meals, transportation, materials). The scholarship may cover costs of books and materials including computers and other instruments, art supplies, special lessons including language, travel to places of study and/or internship.
§ We work closely with universities, companies, and other institutions, and we strongly favor intership + study scholarship offerings. Sometimes travel is involved and we work to address those costs and the logistics and various bureaucratic elements (e.g., visas for international travel).
§ In our plan, most of the activities will be conducted, at least initially, with a few institutions, primarily in the United States of America and progressively inb other countries. Activities involving scholarship recipients will tend to involve programs and projects in these and related institutions. These are intended to include several well-known universities and learning centers in USA, Europe and Asia.
§ We do not accept direct applications or solicitations. Nor is there a rigid schedule or time cycle for making awards. We receive and review nominations that arrive through a number of channels, primarily by two methods:
§ Awards are made to individuals and their families, and to specific institutions such as colleges and universities.
§ All financial matters will be carefully administered and controlled by third-party accountants and auditors in USA and the respective country of the awardee(s). We are considering to have an external, third-party financial review committee consisting of persons who have outstanding professional and personal records and no financial ties at all to any affiliated company, institute, or persons in executive management of Mirnova Foundation.
Presently (Autumn 2022), we are in the process of getting things organized and set up. We hope this will all be completed soon, a few weeks and months away.
The following document presents in somewhat more detailed form how everything works with respect to the Program as it has been summarized. We present more details regarding the processes of finding individuals who are then invited to be considered for the different opportunities and awards.
§ We emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) but also we promote the inclusion of and attention to the fine arts in relation to the STEM (thus, in the vernacular of the day, "STEAM").
[1] Individuals who are identified by our staff and our board and mentors
[2] Individuals recommended by a small group of other well-established foundations and organizations of a humanitarian and educational nature with whom we have open communications.
Thanks to incredible good fortune and benefactors - corporate and individual, we are able to undertake this remarkable new way to Serve People.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Copyright © 2021 Mirnova Foundation, a private philanthropic organization