Chapter eight · 1998 onwards
The bursary fund
The Institute's founding purpose, still running, every February.
The bursary fund was established in 1998 as the AIT Bursary Project Committee, and operates today as the Athlone Institute Bursary Project Fund — AIBPROF, a registered non-profit — under the motto Adiuvans se ipsum Adiuvantem: helping those who help themselves.
Every year the call goes out in the Paarl Post and from the pulpits: applications open in January, forms are collected from the member churches and a local pharmacy, and the window closes at the end of February. Eligibility runs to students from Paarl and Mbekweni and to parishioners of the member churches. In recent years the criteria have been revised and the process partly moved online.
The Trust's own figures record more than fifteen hundred students supported since the fund began, and annual awards in the region of half a million rand or more. Those totals appear in the Trust's materials rather than in published reporting, and are shown here pending confirmation.
“Adiuvans se ipsum Adiuvantem — helping those who help themselves.”
Sources for this chapter
- Athlone Institute Bursary Project Fund — application information, athlonebursary.co.za, 2026 Read the source
- AIBPROF Online Bursary Application Step-by-Step Guide, Athlone Institute Bursary Project Fund, January 2025 Read the source
- Bursary project has new criteria, Paarl Post, 19 January 2024 Read the source
- Apply for an AIT bursary, loan, Paarl Post, 21 December 2018 Read the source