Poland helps students from Belarus again. 395 people have received a scholarship this year as part of the ‘Solidary with Belarus – Students’ initiative, organized by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA). In 2021, over PLN 5 million has been allocated for this purpose.
Of the 395 people who receive support, 271 are Belarusian citizens who are beginning first-degree, second-degree or uniform Master’s degree studies, and 124 are those who continue their studies in Poland as scholarship holders under last year’s NAWA ‘Solidary with Students’ initiative. It was part of the campaign ‘Solidary with Belarus’, which was prepared by NAWA at the request of the then Ministry of Science and Higher Education (currently Ministry of Education and Science).
As last year, the campaign ‘Solidary with Belarus – Students’ has enjoyed great popularity, which is best proven by the number of applications; as many as 1,821 have been received.
‘Last year, our assistance started with our immensely popular online Polish language courses for young people from Belarus. We went as far as to organize scholarships for students, researchers and teachers alike. This year, observing the unceasing need to support students from Belarus, we have decided to continue the initiative in the form of an action under which a group of the best students from among last year’s scholarship holders as well as those students who have commenced their studies only this year and have not benefited from such an opportunity before may be awarded the scholarship,’ says dr Grażyna Żebrowska, Director of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.
Students who received a scholarship in 2021 within the framework of the initiative ‘Solidary with Belarus – Students’ study at 62 public and private HEIs supervised by the Ministry of Education and Science. The largest number of people took up their studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, the Jagiellonian University, the University of Warsaw, the University of Lodz and Warsaw School of Economics. The most popular fields of study among Belarusian scholarship holders are: management, computer science, philology, biotechnology and journalism.
The sum of the scholarships depends on the type of studies and amounts to PLN 1250 in the case of first-degree and uniform Master’s degree studies or PLN 1500 in the case of second-degree studies.
It should also be stressed that people from Belarus constitute the second largest – after Ukrainians – group of foreign students taking up education at Polish HEIs. In the academic year 2014/2015, there were approximately 4,200 of them. In 2020/2021, there will be over 9,700 of them. This is an increase of 1,300 people over the previous academic year. This growing interest is evident each year in admissions.