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PEEF focusing more on girls in pursuing higher education

By Our Staff Reporter 2014-11-08
LAHORE: The Punjab Educational Endowment Fund (PEEF) has emerged as a ray of hope for many needy but talented girl and boy students as it is approaching them on its own to offer them substantial scholarships for pursuing higher education.

The PEEF that had started its operations in February 2009 with an endowment fund of Rs1 billion has so far touched the lives of some 80,000 less privileged students by enabling them to pursue their higher education from matriculation to post-graduationlevel, said PEEF board member and PML-N MPA Bushra Anjum Butt while briefing media at PEEF`s offices here on Friday. PEEF chief executive officer Dr Kamran Shams accompanied Ms Butt at the briefing.

Ms Butt said the fund was implementing the Punjab government`s vision of transforming its underprivileged youth into an asset instead of becoming a liability. She said the PEEF had also started focusing more on girls` education and proclaimed that the deserving but talented girls across Punjab would be looked after and supported to pursue higher education.

Ms Butt said the PEEF had now become a Rs11 billion endowment fund organization and was disbursing scholarships to meritorious students through a highly transparent andstringent process. `Not a single student has so far been given scholarship out-of-merit,` asserted Ms Butt, who is also head of the PEEFs`internal audit committee.

Gender-wise, she said, the fund was offering 50 per cent scholarships to girl and boy students, including 80pc on merit and 20pc on special quota which includes orphans, special children, kids belonging to minorities and wards of government servants serving in BPS-1 to 4.

Explaining the selection criteria, PEEF CEO Dr Kamran Shams said the fund`s officials themselves collected results` data from education boards in Punjab and selected top scorers on the basis of different proxies including students` studying in public schools or limited fee private schools and the children of government servants serv-ing in BPS-1 to 4.

`The PEEF proactively selects the scholarship recipients and dispatches offer letters before the admissions processclose atpublicand private sector higher education institutions, said Dr Shams. This year, he said, the fund offered scholarships to 20,000 students.

Answering a question, the PEEF CEO said the scholarships varied at districts` level and added that 50pc scholarships were going to 16 less developed districts and the remaining to the relatively 20 developed districts in the province.

He said the PEEF continued monitoring the performance of scholarship recipients and issued the next installment on satisfactory academic performance.

He said there were also instanceswhen many students had earned PEEF scholarships at two levels.

Dr Shams said the PEEF was also awarding special scholarships to 23 leading educational institutions in the country, including LUMS, to financially support the needy but meritorious students.

He said the PEEF offered matching grant for scholarships in private institutions and full scholarship in public sector institutions.

Following the PEEF`s success story, Dr Shams said the Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments had also created endowment funds, while the federal government was planning to implement this vision.

He said the Balochistan and KP governments had also requested the PEEF to guide and train their officials to run endowment programmes in aneffective and transparent manner.

Ms Butt said the PEEF and the DFID had signed a memorandum of understanding to provide 28,000 scholarships to meritorious and needy students for intermediate and graduation level e ducation.

Under the proposed five-year scholarship programme, she said, the PEEF would provide 28,000 scholarships worth Rs1.625 billion. Of these scholarships, 27,500 scholarships will be offered to girl students residing in 11 less developed districts of Punjab.

Ms Butt said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had also established the Youth Development Centre at Punjab House, Murree, for the training of PEEF scholars. She said some 4,000 scholars had so far been imparted short-term training that helped them win good jobs.