Haseena Nishad along with the recipients of Almirah Educational Scholarship. Kamal Kassim / Gulf Today

Jamil Khan, Senior Reporter

Celebrating the International Women’s Day, a UAE-based entrepreneur Haseena Nishad through her unique initiative, has awarded education sponsorship of 2.5 million Indian rupees for 25 working women as part of Almirah Educational Scholarship for their children.

Haseena Nishad launched the education sponsorship last year to honour 25 women and in its 2nd year she also awarded 25 working women, low-income women including housemaids.

Talking to Gulf Today, she said, “We started this Almirah Educational Scholarship last year to support 25 most deserving students to complete their education as their mothers are working in the UAE and have limited resources. We asked community members to submit through online and this year we received over 4000 applications for education sponsorship. Through a procedure, we selected 25 most deserving girl students and the sponsorship money (100,000 Indian rupees) to their mothers in a ceremony held in Sharjah on the occasion of International Women’s Day,” she added.

She further said that there are many requests for education sponsorship and we decided to award two girls every month as part of this programme and help the deserving students, especially those mothers who are working in the UAE or India.

“With the aim of providing better education to their children and reaching higher positions, these 25 mothers worked hard in various fields in the UAE,” she added.

Each scholarship recipient, who were all mothers, awarded 100,000 rupees (Indian rupees) to support their children’s education in their home country. These mothers work in various fields in the UAE such as housemaids, cooks, caretakers, helpers, cleaning staff, etc. They aim to teach their children to become IPS officers, doctors, engineers, nurses, air hostesses, etc.

Responding a question, Haseena Nishad said, “The selection process involved a skilled committee which selected the most deserving 25 mothers out of thousands of applications. We will continue this to support our hard-working women. After the announcement of the scholarship, many people are contacting us for the scholarship, so the new goal is to give the scholarship to two children every month,” she added.

The event was also attended by Nishad Hussain, Chairman of World Star Holdings, representatives from the Almirah Educational Scholarship committee, including Shajahan Ibrahim, Rajeev K.V., Mohammed Ashik, Prejesh Malappat, Ismail Hanefa, and Mohammed Saeed.