Beyonce and JAY-Z are teaming up to provide $1.1 million in scholarships to help “exceptional” high school students continue their education.
The married supercouple is joining forces through its charities, The BeyGOOD Initiative and The Shawn Carter Foundation, to award $100,000 to “one exceptional senior high school student, with financial needs” in each U.S. city on the remaining dates of its On The Run II Tour.
In total, the APES**T hitmakers will donate funds to 11 youngsters to contribute to their further studies, with entrants asked to demonstrate “academic excellence” and show “financial needs that would make it hard for them to enter a college or university for the academic year 2018-2019”.
Beyonce and JAY-Z announced the news on Sunday (26Aug18), before hitting the stage for their second show in Atlanta, Georgia.
Their On The Run II Tour continues in Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, and their home base of Los Angeles, among other areas.
Officials from each city’s local Boys and Girls Club of America will be tasked with determining the scholarship winners.
The new student hand-outs come four months after the last expansion of the scholarship programme Beyonce previously launched.
She initially unveiled the Formation Scholars Award last year (17), but after her triumphant performance at the Coachella music festival in California in April (18), when the singer honoured the legacy and traditions of America’s historically black colleges, bosses at her BeyGOOD Initiative revealed the fund was being revamped as the Homecoming Scholars Award programme.
The first round of the new scholarships benefited students at Ohio’s Xavier University and Wilberforce University, Tuskegee University in Alabama, and Florida’s Bethune-Cookman University, with each lucky recipient receiving $25,000 (£19,400) for the 2018/2019 academic year. Weeks later, a further four schools were made eligible for the financial boost too, thanks to a partnership with executives at Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Internet giant.
Company chiefs agreed to match the annual $100,000 (£77,600) fund to also aid students at Texas Southern University in the Drunk in Love singer’s native Houston, Texas, Tennessee’s Fisk University, Grambling State University in Louisiana, and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Rap superstar JAY-Z, real name Shawn Carter, has also been running a scholarship fund of his own via his foundation, which he founded in 2003 with his mum, Gloria Carter.
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