Author: A Volunteer

In our 8th year of operation, we’re helping two students who expect to graduate in 2019. We still have funding for one more student this year and as our current Scholars graduate we should be able to support two additional applicants.

We no longer run a campaign for acquiring applicants because we simply don’t have the staff to complete the process at a high level of competence and fairness. Hence we rely on word-of-mouth of the students we have helped in the past and teachers or administrators who have previously helped us find applicants.

In this context, we urge all FURTHER Scholars, to please spread the word-of-mouth for us. Tell people at your work places, mention us in your CV, and generally remember us in any conversation that touches on the subject of education or financial support. Thank you.

As we mark the 7th Anniversary of this scholarship programme, we have one FURTHER Scholar graduating in May 2019 from Khyber Medical College and two additional scholarships for PKR 100,000 each still available for this year. We have not called for direct applications this year because of extremely limited staff time. Instead, The FAST-NU Islamabad Campus has promised to send us by November the details of their students in need. FAST-NU has an excellent financial aid programme with a robust system for identifying deserving students. Based on their analysis, we will select two more FURTHER Scholars in November for the academic year 2018-2019.

Once again, at this sombre time of the year when we remember a gentleman who made this world a better place, we wish all FURTHER Scholars a great year ahead. Being able to offer three scholarships this year is better than what we may have thought a couple of years ago. We still don’t have any outside donations and no past FURTHER Scholar has as yet contributed to funding. However, we have survived and will continue to do so indefinitely because we are inspired by the memory of a kind human being.

It turns out that all FURTHER Scholars from 2016 have either graduated this year or are close to it. However, we have found some deserving new students and will be committing Rs. 100,000 to each of them for the current academic year. Even though our funding is lower than it was in our early years, and therefore we are unable to commit any funds to advertising, we are still able to reach some remarkably deserving students. In view of the funding situation, we are increasingly inclined to favour those candidates who are highly motivated in their studies and determined as well as equipped to get good jobs. The purpose is to make each unit of our limited funding return the greatest number of units for the benefit of our Scholars and their families. Some of our female Scholars in the past got married soon after graduation and did not work. This is essentially a waste of our limited resources. We therefore advise all female candidates to apply only if they are highly motivated to work. In this respect, we have found that female students at medical institutions are strong candidates for our scholarships because they are motivated to use their skills as doctors for the benefit of the family and the community. We therefore encourage all medical students, male and female, to apply.

Congratulations to all those who have graduated this year and to those who have qualified for funding this year. We look forward to helping you achieve your goals.

The second installment of scholarships for 2016-2017 was released on 14 March 2017. All current FURTHER Scholars are requested to monitor their bank accounts and to acknowledge receipt of their scholarship funds. Thank you for your cooperation.