Professors Without Borders (Prowibo) is a UK-based charity that runs short course higher education programmes mainly within developing countries. We help to bridge the educational divide between countries. We aspire to halt the brain drain by bringing the professors in rather than taking the students out.
Prowibo was founded in 2016 by three lecturers from Regent’s University London: Tessy de Nassau (left) Dr Caroline Varin (right), and Majeks Walker (centre), who wanted to correct the imbalance of educational privilege and provide increased access to quality, higher education in developing countries.
The following year, we returned to Sierra Leone to run a programme at Fourah Bay College, the oldest University in West Africa, where we hosted over 100 students for two weeks.
Partnering with the African Rural University (the first all-women university in Africa) in Uganda, we launched our first all-female programme.
We also expanded to Asia, partnering with Srinakharinwirot University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Our professors returned to our partners in Sierra Leone, Thailand and Uganda.
Our Sierra Leone operations expanded with us teaching a programme at the Univeristy of Sierra Leone’s Institute of Public Management and Administration (IPAM) and an infectious disease prevention workshop at the university’s College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS).
We also launched our first-ever program in India with our second all-female program at the Karamat Husain Muslim Girls PG College in Lucknow, India.
In September, our Think Tank held its first conference in partnership with Gulf Futures Center and Bridge the Gulf on Higher Education in the Age of Transformation.
Our operation also expanded, with us partnering with Lycée Malick SY de Thiès in Senegal to launch our first programme taught in French.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting travel restrictions, we had to make the difficult decision to postpone our in-person programmes.
In response, we launched Prowibo Online, an online lecture service, and expanded our online career advice blog to allow us to continue to fulfil our mission to take quality education to the widest possible audience.
Our two year study on Equitable Access to Online Education was published by UNESCO at the World Higher Education Conference. A research video based on these experiences was made in conjunction with students from Richmond, the American University in London
We returned to in-person programmes, reaching 704 students across 9 countries.
We began new partnerships running programmes with Back To Basics, a women-led grassroots organization based in Kenya; University of Lagos in Nigeria; the Ministry of Youth and Sports in Guinea; and the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS) in Nepal.
If you would like to support our work, please consider making a donation. Alternatively, for more information or to get involved – contact us.