Shelby and Gale Davis
16 December 2019
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Shelby and Gale Davis
Shelby and Gale Davis are one of UWC’s greatest-ever supporters, and their family’s involvement with the UWC movement goes back to the year 1998. With a highly successful investment and fund management career, Davis devoted his personal and financial energies to a number of philanthropic aims, focusing on education.
In 2021 he doubled his annual Davis-UWC Dare to Dream Program pledge from USD 5 million to USD 10 million, leading to the creation of up to 300 new scholarships per year through this program only.
"The world needs extraordinary leadership to navigate today’s complex challenges, tensions and conflicts, as well as to make the most of new opportunities. The UWC movement is ideally suited to providing such leaders, and we are privileged to support it."
The Davis-UWC Dare to Dream Program was launched in early 2018 through a pledge by Shelby Davis of over USD 100 million towards the UWC movement’s scholarship fund. For three years, from 2018 to 2020, the donation provided funding for 100 additional scholarships per year for students selected through UWC national committees to attend one of the 18 UWC schools worldwide for their final two years of secondary education.
In 2021, Shelby Davis challenged us to dream even bigger by doubling his support to the Davis-UWC Dare to Dream Scholarship Program: he pledged a further USD 5 million per year as a match-fund for scholarships raised by UWC schools, national committees and UWC International’s newly constituted International Philanthropy Committee.
This amounts to USD 10 million per year for scholarships through the Davis-UWC Dare to Dream Program: as a result, Shelby Davis' extraordinary generosity funds a total of up to 200 Dare to Dream scholarships each year.
The Davis-UWC Scholars Program provides scholarship support to UWC graduates to study at 99 selected partner US colleges and universities.
Launched in 2000 with five pilot universities - needs-based scholarships are awarded to every UWC graduate who has gained acceptance and matriculated at one of the participating universities and colleges. Shelby Davis, a long time UWC patron and former UWC-USA Head - Philip Geier - created the Davis-UWC Scholars Program to advance international and cross-cultural understanding on US college campuses and ultimately throughout the world. Since its inception, the program has provided scholarships to more than 10,000+ scholars from over 160 countries and is the largest international scholarship program for undergraduates in the world.
FINISHED PROGRAMMES
An exceptional match-funding initiative by UWC Patron Shelby M C Davis that was launched in 2015 and was completed in 2020, when UWC schools managed to unlock a total of USD $17million in matched funding.
The Challenge was designed to encourage and increase donations from new UWC alumni, parents and other UWC supporters. To that end, Mr Davis offered USD $1m in matched funding to each of the seventeen participating UWC schools, which could claim the sum once they had increased the number of individual donors year on year. In 2020, UWC Mahindra College and UWC Red Cross Nordic were the last two schools to unlock their full USD $1m match funding and complete the Challenge, for a total of USD $17million in matched funding across all participating schools.
Shelby Davis, UWC Patron
Davis-Mahindra Scholarship Award
Launched in 2014 as a renewal and extension of the then in place Davis International Scholarships, the Davis-Mahindra Scholarship Award was created by Shelby Davis and UWC Mahindra College’s Governor and Chairman of India’s Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra. It was a joint initiative that awarded outstanding UWC students for their exceptional contributions to their respective UWC school or college community. With this programme, Mr Davis funded each UWC school with an annual contribution of USD $40,000 to support their development and their philanthropic activities.
Programme's highlights in recent years include:
- "Fuel for the Future" - In 2018, UWC Li Po Chun used its Davis-Mahindra Scholars Award funding to develop a solar panel project that will improve the school’s sustainability practice in what will be the largest school-based solar panel project in Hong Kong, generating approximately HK$1.9m per year.
- "Decolonising our Education & Giving Back" - In 2017, Pearson College UWC’s initiative on indigenous reconciliation has involved re-developing the school curriculum and how to recruit and fundraise for indigenous student scholarships.
- "Targeting Diversity within the region" - In 2016 UWC Changshu China focused on scholarships, fundraising and nomination of minority ethnic groups in China.
The impact of the Davis-Mahindra Scholarship Award, which came to an end in 2019 to leave space to the wider Davis-UWC Dare to Dream Programme, went far beyond the projects or the UWC schools that it funded. It has inspired a culture of giving towards the UWC movement as a whole, and the true extent of its impact is yet to come.