UNAIR NEWS – Directorate of Student Affairs Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) held an online dissemination of Van Deventer-Maas Indonesia scholarship (VDMI) on Saturday, January 21, 2023. This event is open to all UNAIR students.

The dissemination started with a speech by the person in charge (PIC) of VDMI UNAIR Scholarship Herdina Indrijati MPsi Psychologist. Herdina invited students who joined the dissemination to take advantage of this opportunity as best as possible.

“We hope there will be more interest this year because I believe all of you from UNAIR still need support from VDMI,” said the lecturer at UNAIR Faculty of Psychology.

Furthermore, Dios Yarona Larosa as communication and alumni relations officer, presented the material from VDMI. He explained the history of the Van Deventer-Maas Indonesia scholarship, which is a program of the Van Deventer-Maas Stichting (VDMS) Foundation owned by Coen Van Deventer and his wife Elisabeth (Betsy) Maas which was established in 1947.

The foundation aims to improve education in Indonesia with the vision of developing independent young talents. In 2017, VDMI officially became a legal entity and, since then, has collaborated with 34 universities to provide scholarships to 1,000 students yearly.

Not only educational aid assistance, Dios explained that the scholarship recipients could later develop their own abilities by participating in various activities organized by VDMI. For example, regional meetings, citizenship workshops, training, writing clubs, newsletters, and social projects.

“All of those are given to students for free, so they can be applied in the world of work. All of these VDMI activities are in accordance with the needs, so before we make a program, we have a student monitoring system to see what the real problems are with our grantees, and then we will implement them in the form of activities,” said Dios.

The VDMI scholarship is open to undergraduate/D4/D3 level students who have at least received their first semester GPA and students with special needs. Registration is open from February 10 to March 10, 2023, and the full registration flow can be viewed here.

Author: Sela Septi Dwi Arista

Editor: Nuri Hermawan