Y12 Student wins place in prestigious Rise programme

Y12 student Madalena Carneiro won a place on the first Rise programme, an initiative of Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust. Students from more than 170 countries applied to a programme that provides access to a lifetime of benefits. The programme aims to find brilliant people who need opportunity and supports them for life as they work to serve others. It starts at ages 15–17 and offers scholarships, mentorship, access to career development opportunities, funding, and more as Global Winners work toward solving humanity’s most pressing problems.
At St. Julian’s, we are immensely proud of Madalena’s achievement and wish her all the best for the future.

How did you find out about this programme?

I was looking for scholarships because I really want to study film in the United States, but film schools are expensive. My mother came across Rise Programme, and I thought, why not? It sounded fun. It’s not like any other scholarship programme where you are just asked to write an essay or have good grades. I thought it was exciting.

What attracted you to Rise?

I am really passionate about gender equality. That is what my project is about. I just thought developing a project would be a fun way of getting a scholarship. Even if I didn’t get it, I would have already done something good for my community.

Can you describe your project?

You had to choose one of the sustainable development goals, and I chose gender equality. I focused on the unpaid domestic workload and the unbalance of work that usually falls on women, depriving them of free time. My project is basically to help balance this unpaid workload. It is a two-part project. There is a website with a calculator, which is supposed to trigger a conversation at home and make the couple realise that there is indeed this inequality. The second part is an app that I developed with the help of Dell and Dual Time. You input the tasks on the app, tell it who does which task and, based on time, it will help balance the workload between both members. It is supposed to make this divide more equal. The app is finished, and we are now doing beta testing. I have a couple of family members and a couple of teachers testing the app.

What are the next steps on the programme?

We are now doing a course called Design Thinking every weekend for a couple of weeks. There will also be a three week summit where we are all going to meet for the first time face to face. I am very excited about that. We are also getting funding to develop our project.

How are you feeling right now?

I am overwhelmed. I don’t think it has sunk in yet. It is really exciting.
I remember sitting in my living room and getting this text from my mother with the link and thinking this is a fun thing to do on the side, and now I have this app being developed and a scholarship for whichever university I want to go to. It’s crazy. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but I am very happy.