When UoPeople & HP Partnered to Provide Mentorship programs for women

Iwona Bartosik Urbanowska is a mother of two who moved from Germany to Canada without much support. She worried she didn’t have the finances or time to continue her education, but never gave up on her dream. when she heard about UoPeople’s online university, she enrolled as a business administration major.

This is her story.

Education is the key to a thriving global economy and to a more peaceful, tolerant world. But millions of people don’t have access to education.

The University of the People is working hard to change that, including the creation of the HP mentorship program. HP decided to support 100 women for a two-year program with a specific scholarship for the University of the People and have asked their top talent to mentor them.

“With the explosion of the population that we see worldwide, we’ll soon need over 100 million places for students to study. That means we would have to build 4 universities each week, and each university would have to hold 30,000 students. That’s not going to happen,” said Gabi Zedlmayer, VP of sustainability and social innovation at HP.

But the risk to education isn’t just a future one. Already, there aren’t enough universities to contain all the aspiring people who want to create better lives for themselves.

Many potential students give up on education because they can’t afford it, or because life is too complicated to fit a traditional university in their schedule. But education is crucial – both to improve each potential student’s chances of financial stability, and to the global community.

Free Education is Needed for Global Economy and World Peace

As we state in our vision, the University of the People views higher education as a basic right, that “plays a fundamental role in strengthening respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and in promoting understanding and tolerance,” which, in turn, contribute to global economic development.

The University of the People was founded to make it happen. We do that with tuition-free programs that give you real degrees that are useful in the workforce, so millions of people who don’t have access to education can have a chance to bridge the gap.

“We believe that there isn’t a better reason for the invention of the Internet than spreading the knowledge,” said Shai Reshef, founder and president of the University of the People.