By NNN-Bernama
New Delhi : The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) is deepening its assistance to help Muslim students from non-IDB members.
The Jeddah-based IDB, an arm of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), provides US$8 million to US10 million worth of scholarships a year and Muslim students from non-OIC members can also avail themselves to the financial aid.
Dr Malek Shah Mohd Yusoff, head of IDB’s Scholarship Programme Office, said the ultimate aim was to improve the lives of Muslim minorities in non-OIC member states through empowering them with proper education.
“The only way to uplift the socio-economic status of Muslim minorities in non-member states is through education.
“We want to create a pool of talents for research and development to help uplift Muslims’ socio-economic status,” Malek Shah, who is visiting India and Nepal to gauge the success rate of the scholarship programme, told Bernama here.
Countries like India, home to about 150 million Muslims, and China, with a sizeable Muslim population, continue to benefit from IDB scholarships despite being non-OIC members.
The scholarship programme was started in 1983 with the sole intention of developing human capital in OIC-member and non-member states to keep abreast with changes, mainly in science and technology.
In India alone, some 2,500 Muslim students had benefited since the bank launched the programme.
“Lots of students need financial assistance and we give scholarships to selected students through a non-partisan counterpart organisation.
“We jump-start the programme and they have to leapfrog to improve themselves,” added Malek Shah, a former director of the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) who was seconded to IDB recently.