Arts & culture scholarship imitative launched
Islamabad :17 January: Federal Minister for Education and Literary Heritage Shafqat Mahmood launched the Arts and Culture Scholarship programme here on Thursday.
It is a unique initiative of the ministry launched through the National Endowment Scholarship for the Talent (NEST).
The programme is aimed to promote Arts and Culture in Pakistan, including diverse fields like Film, Theatre, Visual Arts, Ceramics & Textile design.
Giving details of the programme, minister Shafqat Mahmood said that the first stage of the programme comprises upon 400 Scholarships for current year 2020.
The Ministry of Federal Education have included 15 top HEC recognized and Degree awarding institutes of the country, both from public and private sectors. Initially, Rs77 million disbursement has been planned for current year.
Mr. Mahmood said the scholarships for arts and culture were being provided by the government, first time, in the history of our country.
He said it was responsibility of the state to support those who could not pay for education, and this government is not only fulfilling its responsibility but this programme indicates the priorities of the PTI government.
Highlighting the enriched culture of Pakistan, Mr Mahmood said the concept of soft power is necessary parameter to determine the power of any country and nation and they are scaling up the soft power of Pakistan by promoting culture, Arts and Heritage.
The minister said it would directly promote art forms such as movies, music, painting, interior decoration and indirectly promoting the tourism industry.
"These students would be able to utilize these skills and would help improve their own living standards as well as our economy by impacting Film industry, Textile & design Industry."
The minister also added that the arts and culture preserved heritage, influence society by changing opinions and translate experiences across space and time. The art allows people from different space and time to communicate with each other via images, sounds and stories.
CEO of NEST, Federal Secretary for Education Dr. Sajid Yousfani during his address has said; the idea behind this scholarship program is to ensure that anybody who is talented, and has passion to go forward should not be left behind only because of the financial restraints.
This is basically Endowment scholarships and the size of Endowment is 5.2 billion right now; as the size of Endowment would increase, the number and amount of scholarships would also increase, in the future.The news.
