America authorities on Tuesday introduced 500 new scholarships for Pakistani college college students from flood-affected districts to “help them in finishing their levels”.
The calamitous Pakistan floods of 2022 had been the tenth costliest local weather catastrophe to have buffeted a nation over the past decade. The floods inflicted an estimated lack of $3 billion on the nation, brought about over 1,700 deaths and displaced eight million folks.
In January, worldwide donors met in Geneva and dedicated over $9bn to assist Pakistan get better from the flood however the United Nations stated a day in the past that thus far donors have fulfilled solely 40 per cent of the pledges they made.
A press launch issued from the US embassy in Islamabad stated US Ambassador Donald Blome introduced the scholarships at an occasion “celebrating the achievements of feminine students in honour of Worldwide Girls’s Day” on the Greater Schooling Fee (HEC).
Current on the occasion had been Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, Nationwide Catastrophe Administration Authority Chairman Lieutenant Basic Inam Haider Malik, HEC Government Director Dr Shaista Sohail, United States Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID) Mission Director Reed Aeschliman, college vice chancellors, college students and alumni.
“America, by means of USAID, has supported scholarships for meritorious but financially deprived college students to pursue greater training at prime Pakistani universities,” the press launch reads.
It added that in partnership with the HEC, the US authorities has awarded over 6,000 scholarships by means of the Advantage and Wants Primarily based Scholarship Programme.
“Sixty per cent of these scholarships have been awarded to ladies as a part of the US authorities’s help for girls’s greater training,” the press launch acknowledged.
“Worldwide Girls’s Day not solely serves as a day to rejoice the social, financial, cultural, and political achievements made by our moms, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters. It is usually a name to motion to speed up gender parity and to dismantle gender stereotypes,” the press launch quoted Ambassador Blome as saying.
HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed remarked that the US authorities’s help to strategic sectors in Pakistan, particularly the upper training sector, was “commendable”.
“Not solely have these scholarships helped safe college training for a lot of underprivileged college students, lifting themselves and their households out of poverty, they’ve helped provide Pakistan with essential expertise and information units to drive the economic system,” he added.
“Pakistan has suffered from catastrophic floods the place hundreds of thousands of individuals misplaced their houses and livelihoods. The humanitarian response by america and different donors is commendable. We welcome US help for flood-affected college students,” the press launch quoted the planning minister as saying.
Jennifer Andleeb, a scholarship alumna, shared the challenges she confronted in achieving greater training and the way her scholarship “reworked the trajectory of her life”.
“She emphasised that constructive adjustments in society might solely occur by investing in training, and that empowered, educated ladies are essential to making sure a brighter future for Pakistan,” the press launch reads.