Bar-Ilan University Will Provide Grants of 1,000-5,000 NIS to All Students at the Front
To provide these grants, the University has set up a 12M NIS emergency fund for scholarships & benefits to students called up for IDF reserve duty. An additional 4M NIS fund has also been set up to support BIU’s emergency initiatives to help all Israelis
Bar-Ilan University has established a NIS 16 million emergency fund to assist approximately one third of its 20,000 students who've been drafted into reserve duty and for ten initiatives launched for the benefit of the community-at-large.
Students on the front lines will each receive a NIS 1,000-5,000 grant to be applied towards housing and tuition, emotional support, and additional study hours during the academic year.
A global fundraising campaign for this emergency fund has now been launched.
Bar-Ilan University President Prof. Arie Zaban: "These students bear the weight not only of fighting for Israel’s survival, but also the burden of concern for their and their families’ future. They’re distressed about how they’ll pay for tuition and if they can manage their rent. They’re fearful about covering their children’s expenses when they cannot work."
"We look forward to seeing all our students back on campus as soon as the academic year begins," added Zaban. "Thousands of our students are currently drafted into the reserves and others are volunteering in the variety of initiatives launched to benefit Israeli society. We greatly appreciate the contribution of each and every one of them. We have formed eight teams that will be in charge of reabsorbing students after the war. These teams are building an academic and emotional framework to ensure that the return to normalcy leaves no one behind."
Bar-Ilan University CEO Zohar Yinon estimates that aside from the emergency fund, the University has invested an additional NIS 4 million for various Bar-Ilan initiatives launched in support of Israeli society as a whole. These initiatives include a hotline manned by dozens of faculty members and graduates from the Department of Psychology who are providing emotional support; a school at Kfar Hamaccabiah in Ramat Gan launched by the Faculty of Education for evacuees of the Gaza Envelope; a mock teddy bear medical clinic to ease children's fear of doctors set up by the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine; a system that directs hundreds of students to various volunteering opportunities; a mobile vision examination lab, dispatched by the School of Vision Sciences, that has fitted hundreds of evacuees in Dead Sea and other hotels with new glasses; lectures and seminars organized by the Center for Youth; lectures organized by the Faculty of Jewish Studies and the Faculty of Humanities; briefings by researchers from the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies for the international and diplomatic communities; activities in the US geared towards the fight against anti-Semitism organized by the Lookstein Center for Jewish Education; and the distribution of hundreds of donated portable ultrasound machines to the IDF medical corps.