Mastercard Foundation Scholar Community Launches Ekasi Podcast

The Ekasi podcast has been thoughtfully conjured up and carefully crafted by students on the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, sharing intimate and down-to-earth stories about their experiences as international students learning in a foreign country thousands of miles from their home countries. With a focus around ‘Edinburgh firsts’, the first season airs on 21 August with a further eight episodes aired every Friday at 12pm thereafter.

Ekasi is a set of stories of inspiring people who convene to share their experience of navigating a different system and way of life. Being privileged to facilitate these conversations and add my personal flair was the highlight of my year – a step into chaos that ended with invaluable lessons, connections and the much-needed order. To the audience, I’m sure they’ll find the stories relatable. I hope they get the message – both deep and light-hearted, specific and broad– and gain a better understanding of this small but impactful community of scholars at the University of Edinburgh.

Geofrey Njovu

The podcast team shares the behind-the-scenes reasoning for creating the podcast and delve deeper into what the aptly named ‘Ekasi’, which in Zulu means a sense of belonging and community, is all about.

The desire to build community

It is the desire to build a better community that drives the people here at Ekasi. Over the past ten months, a team of dedicated individuals have worked tirelessly to collect, document, edit and package stories into what is now known as the Ekasi Podcast. The debut season is a catalogue of nine carefully crafted episodes, each exploring in a unique way the theme of travel and relocation. The hosts and guests engage in jovial, relaxed and insightful conversations as they share their ‘firsts’ right from the moment they arrived in Edinburgh.

Stories about first-time experiences in Edinburgh

Needless to say, the debut season packages a variety of voices and perspectives. This is due to the team’s intentional and calculated efforts to diversify its guestlist. As the Ekasi Podcast audience, you get to hear from an incredible group of people - not only those in the University’s Senior Leadership (such as Principal Peter Mathieson) but also the students. Some of the invited guests relocated to Edinburgh for academic reasons while others for career engagement, but all in all, driven by the incessant human desire to chase after their dreams of becoming better people. The difference in viewpoints brought about by this is what contributes to the richness of Ekasi’s debut season and the podcast as a whole.

This is the bedrock upon which Ekasi Podcast sits – a community brought closer to each other through the sharing of personal and intimate stories. Join the team as they engage their guests in tantalizing conversations about their first-time experiences in Edinburgh. Make sure to tune in every Friday evening to hear about what their expectations of Edinburgh were prior to their arrival, and whether or not the reality matched to them? What were the challenges that they faced, and how were they able to rise above them?

Listen to the first episode of the Ekasi podcast

Listen to the podcast