Photo caption: (from right) Wildan Zulfikar, Syakir Hashim, Tengku Syamil, and Faruq Rasid
By Azreen Azirinee Azizi
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” according to a famous quote. Education is important but not everyone is lucky enough to receive higher education because it is expensive.
According to Business Insider survey conducted for academic year 2014/2015, Malaysia was at number 5 for being among the most expensive countries for a university degree. Without scholarships or loans, it is costly to get a degree. This has raised concerns among parents who want to give the best for their children’s education.
Young and passionate team
A team of four passionate members consisting of Tengku Syamil, 24, a third year Business Adminitration student at IIUM; Syakir Hashim, 23, a Global Studies undergraduate at National University of Singapore (NUS); Wildan Zulfikar, 21, majoring in Information System at IIUM; and Faruq Rasid, 24, a Computer Engineering undergraduate at NUS, has started with a brilliant idea to help fund students in need. Their mission is to make higher education affordable and accessible to deserving students by helping to match students with funders.
A Giving Community
Malaysia is known for its giving culture. Malaysian people are very compassionate in helping those in needs. According to Tengku Syamil, a co-founder of SkolaFund, what inspired SkolaFund is that during his first year at IIUM, he came across a post at IIUM Online from a student who was in need of a financial aid and many people had responded to the post asking for that student account number and said that they want to help out with whatever amount they have.
Tengku Syamil said: “There’s a group of hardworking students who need financial support and there’s a group of people who are constantly willing to help. What if I can come up with a platform to give these students a voice so that they can reach out to support people? A platform that can allow the community to come together and crowd-fund scholarships and award them to deserving students.” This has motivated him to initiate SkolaFund to help lessen the financial burden of the students and allow them to concentrate more on learning.
Create Scholarship
The objectives of SkolaFund are to provide students in need with a platform for them to reach out to a larger audience for support to crowd-fund their scholarship, to allow the community to support high potential students, and to make higher education affordable and accessible for students who qualify and wish to pursue higher education. They also want to open doors to multiple opportunities which can help students to pull their family out of poverty.
One of the features available is Create Scholarship. Tengku Syamil said, “Create Scholarship is a feature that will allow anyone, business entities or organisations to start their own scholarship for a very low cost and they can determine the amount and criteria of the students that they want to fund.”
Achievements
SkolaFund has achieved many things since its establishment, among which, becoming one of the 11 startups selected for Startupbootcamp Fintech Accelerator out of 300 that applied from 24 different countries and among the 50 Asean startups selected for MaGIC’s first Accelerator programme.
SkolaFund has also successfully crowd-funded about RM33,000 worth of scholarship for nine students and about 50 students are waiting for their campaigns to be launched.
Tengku Syamil said that SkolaFund is committed to introduce more features in the future for students to acquire and manage funds to finance their higher education.
Start Your Campaign
Students who are interested need to sign up at SkolaFund webpage or using personal Facebook or Twitter account and submit the application form there. Skolafund will assess and verify their application before they launch the campaign. The standard requirement to apply for SkolaFund is that a student must be a current student or has received an offer to continue higher education, and the household income is lower than national average of RM6,000.
However, if the student doesn’t meet this standard requirement, he or she will be assessed on a case by case basis. Students also must be willing and able to promote his/her own personal campaign.
Sponsoring students on Skolafund is easy. Simply select the student that you wish to support, click the sponsor button and determine the amount you wish to sponsor and the payment that you wish to use. After sponsoring you’ll get a note from the student to confirm that the sponsorship is successful.
“No action is insignificant if it is based on good intention,” said Tengku Syamil hoping to see more problem-solving startups in IIUM.
He also hoped that IIUM community will keep giving endless support to SkolaFund.***
Photo credit to SkolaFund