Tomasz Rzymkowski, Deputy Minister of Education and Science, and Dawid Kostecki, Director of the National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), presented the assumptions of the next round of the General Władysław Anders Programme for the Polish Diaspora. The budget of the sixth programme is approximately PLN 30 million. 

“The Anders Programme is intended to encourage, and at the same time financially support all those young people who have Polish roots, hold a Polish passport, have Polish citizenship or use the Card of the Pole to continue their higher education at excellent Polish universities”, said Tomasz Rzymkowski, government plenipotentiary for the development and internationalisation of education and science.

For Polish young people, participation in the programme is a symbolic return to the country of their ancestors, an opportunity to learn about Polish culture and history. So far, 3,500 young people have benefited from it, and a further 500 scholarships are planned in the programme this year.

The General Władysław Anders Scholarship Programme is addressed to young Poles from all over the world. Its most popular studies include management, information technology and economics. Most students choose to study at the Jagiellonian University, the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw School of Economics and the Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

The NAWA director stated that the Anders Programme is NAWA’s flagship project. “We are trying to connect the entire Polish diaspora on different continents. This scholarship is in fact the very beginning and genesis of NAWA”, said Kostecki. 

The programme attracts the most talented young people who want to continue their studies in the country of origin of their ancestors. The growing interest is evidenced by the steadily increasing number of countries of scholarship holders’ origin. Most of them come from Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Kazakhstan. The programme’s scholarship holders are also citizens of Brazil, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Jordan, Moldova, France, the United States, Turkmenistan, and Italy.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński