How Do Scholarships Change Lives?
Support Scholarships.info, Croatian web portal on scholarships
The Institute for the Development of Education (IDE) launched the portal Scholarships.info (Stipendije.info) in 2005 as a unique service to Croatian students with a mission to provide comprehensive information on available scholarship opportunities in Croatia and abroad and advice on successful application strategies. Besides open calls for applications, detailed application instructions and examples of successful application sets, Croatian students may consult the portal’s extensive database of scholarship awarding institutions, read scholarship success stories or ask for free guidance from professional educational advisors at IDE.
Today the portal receives an average of 140.000 web hits per month by students who seek funding for their studies in Croatia and abroad. Numerous representatives of universities, foundations, companies, embassies or public institutions also visit the portal to announce their calls for applications and extend educational opportunities to exceptional candidates and/or students who could otherwise not access higher education.
The Campaign Scholarships Change Lives
In celebration of the 7th anniversary of the portal’s existence, in 2012 IDE launched a support campaign for the portal Scholarships.info and encouraged Croatian students and scholarships recipients to form a support community for the portal and join IDE in its efforts to make educational opportunities more available to Croatian citizens. Individual scholarships beneficiaries and institutional representatives were encouraged to support the portal by donating, disseminating information on scholarship opportunities, sharing their experiences and peer-to-peer advising on the most successful scholarship application strategies. The campaign took place at the portal Scholarships.info, IDE’s Facebook community on Scholarships and at the Scholarships and Educational Programmes Fair.
IDE also invited scholarship programmes alumni to share their personal views on the role of scholarships in ensuring equal access, transparency and international mobility in higher education. Within the campaign, IDE’s volunteer supporters filmed short amateur video clips featuring scholarship recipient experiences, advice to potential applicants and first-hand accounts on the importance of scholarships for strengthening individual competences and the overall community development.
Click on the video clip in the right-hand menu to find out how a scholarship program turned into a life-changing experience for a young Croatian university teacher and her students.