The UWC for Afghan Youth Appeal was launched last year as the humanitarian crisis started to unfold in Afghanistan. As well as providing immediate assistance to help evacuate UWC alumni, their families and incoming Afghan UWC students, the UWC community wanted to go further to support young people in Afghanistan as their access to education came under threat.

The opportunity to study is crucial in helping young people to build a better future for themselves and their communities, and UWC has been working for many years to support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, including refugees and internally displaced people. On average around 5% of our students in the IB Diploma years come from refugee, displaced or persecuted backgrounds and benefit from full scholarship provision at one of the 18 UWC schools and colleges.

Volunteer Co-chair of UWC Afghanistan (the national committee selecting students from the country), Ghaus Hussaini, who is also a UWC alumnus from Afghanistan (Pearson College UWC, 2011-13), points out these 20 new scholarships show the movement’s unfaltering commitment to education access:

The UWC movement brings the best of humanity together and humans like you enable this to happen. Your contribution to the UWC for Afghan Youth Appeal will change the lives of so many young people and especially of young girls who are forced to stay at home. It gives them another chance to breathe and get educated. It gives them hope, and belief that the world has not forgotten them. Thank you.

Young refugees, internally displaced and persecuted people are five times more likely* to be out of school than more fortunate young people. Their communities need future leaders with strong abilities, social consciousness and a drive for peace and reconciliation, which is why providing opportunities to receive a quality education is so important. Chair of the UWC International Board, Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro comments:

By offering an outstanding international education where gender equality is modelled, we show our commitment, not just to the future of Afghanistan, but to a world where both men and women take an active role in leadership and peace-building. This is a long-term investment which will not only affect the lives of these individual scholars, but also their communities and the wider world for generations to come.

UWC will now focus on ensuring these new scholars arrive safely at their UWC schools for the coming academic year, while also continuing to seek resources for even more life-changing scholarships for young Afghans in the future. 

To find out more about the UWC Refugee Initiative, launched in 2016 to raise funds for an additional 100 all-inclusive scholarships per year for refugee students, click here.

*No more excuses: provide education to all forcibly displaced people (produced by the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report and UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR))