Scholarship

Dubai Men's College (DMC) and Dubai Women's College (DWC) recently signed an agreement with Damas to establish the Damas Student Scholarship Fund (DSSF). The scholarships granted from the DSSF are for students who have high academic performance, or high academic potential and are in need of financial aid. Students on this scholarship have to maintain or improve their grades to keep the scholarship.

The sholarship has been effective since August 2007, and is valid for a period of ten calendar years. This scholarship has been available to students at the DMC for the past year and is now being made available to students at the DWC.

Present at the signing of this agreement were the Board of Trustees, the Secretary of the Student Parliament, DWC and the President of the Student Council, DMC.

The signing was preceded by a presentation by Ahmad A. Sharif, Supervisor of Student's Services at the DMC. The presentation provided a detailed breakdown of how the money from last year's fund was divided.

The fund

This year's fund is projected to follow a similar breakdown. The students benefiting from the scholarship received Dh1,000 per month. This was given to them in the form of Dh500 for fuel, Dh150 in food vouchers and Dh350 as pocket money. Both Sharif and Jamal Qasim Sultan, Chief Executive Officer of Sultan Group Investment LLC, emphasised that research had shown that all the students receiving the scholarship showed a significant increase in their Grade Point Average. Fifteen students received scholarships from the fund last year.

According to Mariam Kalantar, Secretary of the Student Parliament, DWC, around 700 students at DWC have been identified as eligible for financial aid.

"We have an obligation to our community and therefore will be sponsoring more students in the future. I hope other establishments will join us as well," said Tamjeed Abdullah, Deputy Director of the Damas Group.

Confronting the issue that students who are in need of financial aid, often face, Dr Howard Reed, Director of DWC said, "There are far too many students who drop out to work so that they can earn money. They are too proud to come in and ask for help. We are trying to identify those students, and to get them to apply for this scholarship."

Mohammad Junaid, President of the Student Council, said, "Each class has a student council leader. We ask these leaders to approach, under the table, those who they think would be eligible for this scholarship."

Applying for the scholarship

Students who wish to apply are required to fill in an application form and submit it with the necessary supporting documents. Their application is then sent to Beit Al Khair, which determines their eligibility based on a range of criteria, such as academic qualifications, average family income, number of working family members and number of dependents the bread winner has to support.

"This fund is not a charity, it is a scholarship. It's a students' right to receive help from the community. They deserve it," said Sultan.