Key Points:

• In 2017, the International Open University (IOU), founded by Dr. Bilal Philips  launched the 1 Million African Scholarship project with the aim of educating one million African students.
• To date, more than MYR 10,000,000 has been raised for this project.
• The raised funds will help IOU establish learning centers across Africa and provide 100% tuition-free bursaries to thousands of African students.

Campaign story:

The International Open University was founded in 2007 by world-renowned revert-scholar Dr Bilal Philips. To date approximately 30,000 students have enrolled and thousands have graduated. 

In 2017, they launched the 1 Million African Scholarship (1MAS) project with the aim of educating one million of the 94% of underprivileged high school graduates in Africa who don’t find seats in the universities of their various countries.

About 1 billion of the world’s population resides in Africa and only 6% of the Sub-Saharan youth are enrolled in the higher education institutions, compared to the global average of 26%. 

When rolling out the 1MAS programme, they found out many lack the basic necessities for online learning, such as Internet connection, computers, electricity etc, so IOU were obliged to build 1MAS learning centres, to facilitate their studies. In these centres, students have easy access to supervised and carefully-monitored study under the guide of an IOU graduate.

Till date IOU has built more than 25 1MAS centres in more than 20 countries in Africa.They have offered thousands of scholarships to students in multiple disciplines. Currently, 1MAS students make up more than one-third of the total student body.

Thousands of students graduate every semester and IOU is working hard with their local and international partners to secure placements for their graduates.

Moving forward, IOU aims to expand this project further into Eastern Africa, where a huge potential awaits.

Let's come come together now and be a part of this wonderful project!

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said, "Whoever guides to a good deed gets the same reward as the doer of that deed.'' [Muslim]