Totalling just under 1,000 individual meetings over four days, the event gave scholarship organisations the chance to meet potential partners in person and discuss future collaborations.

“This was the largest gathering of scholarship organisations in the world”

“This was the largest gathering of scholarship organisations in the world,” BMI president and CEO Samir Zaveri told The PIE News.

“These organisations would rarely have an opportunity to meet in person and this event gave them a time to meet with a lot of new potential international partners and to network among themselves and talk about issues they all face in their day-to-day work.”

Representatives from the Saudi Ministry of Education, the World Bank, IIE, Chevening, CONACYT, COLFUTURO and the European Commission participated at the event. They were met by universities and education institutions from over 12 countries, including Australia, France, Germany, Canada, Korea, Italy, Finland, Turkey, Oman, USA, UK and the Netherlands.

The event, Zaveri said, was very well received by all participants, with 90% of them saying it was “excellent” or “good”, and planning to return next year. BMI is also facilitating the creation of a global scholarship association, an initiative which at the moment is being led by COLFUTURO and others, said Zaveri.

“This event really provided us with a great chance for networking and building relationships with a wide range of universities,” Khalid Ali Alshaqsi, director of scholarships from Oman’s Ministry of Health said.

Given its popularity, the next event is already scheduled for April 2019. Zaveri added that he sees the event growing, with many more scholarship organisations participating next year.

The Global Scholarship Summit follows another BMI-run event, The Gulf Scholarship Summit, which takes place in Abu Dhabi in October and is part of the UAE International Education Week.