Asian University for Women (AUW) is pleased to announce a partnership with Tawakkol Karman Foundation (TKF), founded by Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakkol Karman, to provide scholarships for 50 young women from Yemen to enroll at AUW.

CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH - Media OutReach^[1] - July 18, 2018 - Asian University for Women (AUW) and Tawakkol Karman Foundation (TKF) jointly announced a scholarship for 50 qualified young women from Yemen to attend Asian University for Women in Chittagong. Starting this year, the scholarship expands AUW's mission to provide quality higher education for young women who are from conflict-affected countries, adding Yemen to existing student recruitment in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Syria, and Palestine.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman, left, alongside Vice Chancellor Professor Nirmala Rao, right, sign the Memorandum of Understanding at the AUW tenth anniversary Symposium.

Tawakkol Karman speaks at the AUW tenth anniversary Symposium.

The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between AUW and TFK on Friday, May 12 was celebrated during AUW's tenth anniversary Symposium, entitled From Survival to Sustainable Development: Addressing Urgent Issues for a Just World. The signing by AUW Vice Chancellor Professor Nirmala Rao and TKF Founder and Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist and activist, strengthened the relationship between AUW and TKF, and inaugurated AUW's student outreach and recruitment in Yemen and its neighboring countries.

Remarking on this landmark partnership between AUW and TKF, Karman reemphasized that "I have always believed that education is the foundation for both development and peace. Thus, what Asian University for Women does is a significant contribution in this context. In order for women to play active roles in society and be able to overcome policies that marginalize and weaken them, they must be equipped with necessary education and qualification; these are nonnegotiable requirements."

The following day, Tawakkol Karman gave the keynote address during the Sixth Commencement Ceremony of AUW. During the Ceremony, Chancellor of Asian University for Women Cherie Blair and Vice Chancellor Professor Rao bestowed upon Karman a Doctorate of Arts, honoris causa, for her prominent advocacy of democracy, freedom of expression, and women's safety and participation in the peacebuilding of her native Yemen. Karman is the first Yemeni, the first Arab, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

About Asian University for Women

Founded in 2008 and located in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Asian University for Women is the first of its kind: a regional institution dedicated to women's education and leadership development -- international in outlook, but rooted in the contexts and aspirations of the people of Asia.  Students from 15 countries attend AUW.  This University exists solely to support a rising network of women leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers from across the region. It seeks out women who have significant academic potential and demonstrate courage and a sense of outrage at injustice and are empathic to the woes of other people.  A majority of AUW's students are first in their family to enter university; 98% of AUW's students are on full or near-full scholarship funded by private donors from around the world.  A majority of AUW graduates find employment in the private sector in their home countries while about 25% go on to pursue graduate studies. AUW graduates or former students have been admitted to Stanford, Oxford, Columbia, Brandeis, Surrey and a host of other leading universities in the world.

About Tawakkol Karman Foundation

Tawakkol Karman Foundation (TKF) is a non-profit organization working in all development fields and support the ideas, policies, activities and projects that participate in leading communities to democracy and development. TKF also works in spreading peace, establishing human good will values, violence, poverty and ignorance resistance and all forms of racism. TKF believes in freedom, solidarity and peace concepts and considers democracy, sovereignty of law and fair development a way to achieve a positive and sustainable change in life of members and communities. TKF with partnership with its local and international partners aims achieving concepts that guarantee the saving freedoms, rights and human dignity and mitigation of armed conflicts and resolute them and open a door to build peace and stabilization and achieve a decent life.

References

1. ^{^} Media OutReach (www.media-outreach.com)