“Solidarity with Belarus” - NAWA scholarships for students, scientists and teachers
06.11.2020
For years, through the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been co-funding scholarship programmes for students from countries covered by Polish development assistance programme. The Stefan Banach Scholarschip Programme and Ignacy Łukasiewicz Scholarship Programme are implemented by means of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA).
Due to the difficult situation in Belarus, in the academic year 2020/2021 NAWA launched three activities under the government initiative “Solidarity with Belarus” to support students, scientists and teachers from Belarus - “Solidarity with teachers”, “Solidarity with students” and “Solidarity with scientists”.
Thanks to the “Solidarity with students” initiative, Belarusian citizens will be granted scholarships to start studies or preparatory courses to undertake education in Polish language at Polish universities. The scholarship will be paid for up to 10 months.
Under the “Solidarity with scientists” initiative, Belarusian citizens who hold a doctor’s degree will be offered scholarships if invited to a year-long research placement by a scientific institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences or Łukasiewicz Research Network institute. The scholarship will be paid for up to 12 months.
Additionally, students from Belarus who are studying or planning to start their studies in Poland and who need the language for learning or work, attended Polish language online courses in October and another edition is underway in November. The courses are completely free of charge.
Information on the support for student and scientists, and the “Solidarity with Belarus” initiative details are available at the NAWA website: www.nawa.gov.pl
Also individual Polish universities sympathize with Belarusian students and - bearing in mind the situation in their homeland - offer real assistance.
The support provided includes free of charge admissions to second-degree studies, financial aid in case of personal or economic hardships, and free Polish language courses as well as an offer for student expelled from their universities at home. Similar support for students from Belarus is offered by, among others, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, the University of Silesia in Katowice, or the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszów.
Belarusians are numerous among foreign students. According to Statistics Poland, in the academic year 2018/2019 over 7,000 Belarusians were studying/in Poland. It is the second largest group of foreigners - after Ukrainians - who also choose to complete their higher education in Poland. Belarusians amounted to 9.3% of all foreigners studying in our country.