The Tellus Educational Foundation

 

is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing scholarships to talented and deserving students from the third world for post-graduate work in areas which will have long term social and environmental benefits.  We pride ourselves on top quality recipients and near-zero overhead.

 

The foundation is named after Tellus, also known as Terra Mater, the Roman earth-mother goddess.

 

The Tellus Educational Foundation is a tax exempt private foundationunder Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions aredeductible under Section 170 of the Code. 

The Tellus Leadership Scholarships are awarded for study in the following general areas:

• Public Health
• Nature Conservation
  
• Environmental Sciences
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Prevention of Cruelty and Abuse of Human and Non-Human Animals
• Education
• Political Science

Our scholarships are awarded through U.S. tax-exempt universities, charities and non-governmental organizations. The Tellus Leadership Scholars are typically drawn from the ranks of committed participants in ongoing clinical, research, social or environmental projects, to which they will return, with added vigor on the completion of their studies.

Educational institutions, charities and non-governmental organizations may apply to submit the applications for scholarships on behalf of highly qualified individuals.

 

Dr. Shiroya-Wandabwa is a pediatrician from Kenyaand a graduate of Makere University in Uganda and Nairobi University.  She is a senior program officer with ICAP (International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs).  She is currently enrolled in the masters of public health program at Columbia University''s Mailman School of Public Health. 

Dr. Patience Afulani

Virginia Senkomago

The Harry Schwarz Conservation Scholarship is awarded to remarkable individuals engaged in nature conservation in third world countries.  The scholarship will cover tuition, fees and living expenses needed for completion of a post graduate degree that will assist its recipient in furthering his or her conservation work.  The foundation is particularly interested in people currently working in African elephant conservation.

Harry Schwarz, after whom the scholarship is named and who was its inspiration, was best known for his work in resisting apartheid, South Africa's now-defunct system of forced racial segregation. Mr. Schwarz has been widely acknowledged for that work.  The Conservation Scholarship scholarship honors a lesser known aspect of this remarkable man's life - his respect and love for animals, in particular the African elephant.

In 1990, the South African government announced that the apartheid system would be dismantled.  Harry Schwarz, then a senior member of Parliament on the opposition benches, was one of the apartheid's most outspoken critics.  For that reason, in order to prove to the world, particularly the United States, that apartheid would indeed be dismantled, then President de Klerk appointed Schwarz as his ambassador to Washington.  Schwarz remained in that post until apartheid had truly been outlawed, sanctions had been abandoned, and he was able to accompany Nelson Mandela to the White House as his country's first democratically elected president.  He and Mandela knew each other well.  They had not just been classmates at law school, Schwarz had been on the defense team in the trial that led to Mandela's twenty seven year incarceration.  

One of the primary tasks facing the new ambassador was to persuade Congress and the legislatures of fifty states that they should end sanctions and resume commerce with South Africa. Encouraging tourism was considered one of his most important goals.  For that reason, early in his term, he was approached by the Safari Club - an organization whose wealthy members compete to kill African wildlife.  The Safari Club therefore saw South Africa as an ideal destination for trophy hunting.  Now that apartheid was itself dying, the Safari Club's members looked forward to even greater access to South Africa's wildlife, including its elephants. This would undoubtedly encourage more tourism and bring much needed revenue to the struggling country.  But to Schwarz the sacrifice of innocent animals was not a price worth paying for much needed dollars.  Despite his instructions to do everything he could to encourage commerce with South Africa, Schwarz refused to continue to give the grants that his predecessor had given to Safari Club or entertain its members in his embassy.  Following a heated argument over the issue of hunting elephants for sport, culminating in an anti-semitic tirade from the Safari Club's representative, Schwarz had him unceremoniously escorted out of his office and onto Massachusetts Avenue. The end of apartheid would, in Schwarz's mind, not just benefit South Africa's human population.

Had the Tellus Educational Foundation existed when Schwarz was a young man, he would have been a worthy recipient of one of its scholarships.  He was a self made man, having fled Nazi Germany as a penniless Jewish refugee. As soon as he was old enough, rather than simply pursue his career in law or banking, he volunteered to join the South African Air Force.  He spent the remainder of the war flying combat missions in North Africa, Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy.  He was academically brilliant, graduating at the top of his class in law school, and winning numerous awards for excellence. He was an eloquent and fearless speaker, organizing his fellow World War II veterans in street protests against apartheid and arguing for racial and economic justice in the courts and in parliament. Indeed his career in politics was triggered by, and began almost immediately after the inception of the apartheid system. Until that day came, when he escorted Nelson Mandela into the White House, his commitment to ending apartheid never wavered, despite threats, setbacks, emotional turmoil and financial opportunities, any one of which would have tested the commitment of even the strongest men.  

Schwarz believed in the principles upon which Tellus was founded.  His sense of justice and fairness were justifiably focused in on ending racial discrimination in his adopted country.  But had apartheid never happened, Schwarz would certainly have devoted his energies to another aspect of the cause in which he believed - the cause of fairness for all the inhabitants of planet Earth.  It is in that belief that the Harry Schwarz Conservation Scholarship was created.

Harry Schwarz was born in Cologne Germany in May of 1924.  He died in Johannesburg, South Africa in February of 2010.