Qatar Foundation’s (QF) Tamaiuz and Tafawq scholarships are empowering students to contribute meaningfully to Qatar’s future by nurturing academic excellence, community engagement, and cultural understanding. The two programs, designed with distinct purposes, open doors for talented students across QF’s partner universities and Hamad Bin Khalifa University.
According to Noof Al Derham, Director of Student Financial Services at QF, both scholarships play an essential role in supporting the Foundation’s wider educational mission. The scholarships are designed to accommodate different high-calibre students’ talents and needs, providing equal opportunities tailored to their requirements.
Tamaiuz and Tafawq Scholarships: Empowering Students
Each year, QF’s Student Financial Services selects two new students to receive Tafawq scholarships and six students to receive Tamaiuz scholarships per partner university and Hamad Bin Khalifa University. The selection process is based on each scholarship’s criteria, ensuring that the most competitive student applications are chosen.
Tafawq scholarship recognizes students’ community contribution, evaluating their profiles based not only on their high GPA but also on their effort to play a key role in their community and their capability of being leaders. Meanwhile, Tamaiuz ensures that promising students are not hindered by financial constraints, enabling them to focus on their academic pursuits.
Community Engagement and Cultural Understanding
QF encourages its scholars to engage deeply with local culture and service. Scholarship recipients are also encouraged to learn Arabic through QF’s complimentary language program. This program is designed to improve their lingual skills in a creative and encouraging environment.
Two QF students, Azhardika Syahputra and Alia Jamal Saleh AbdulKhaleq, were selected from over 200 candidates for a scholarship program that enables access to education and community service. Syahputra, a junior computer science student from Indonesia at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), received the Tafawq scholarship, which changed the course of his academic journey.
Syahputra’s research focuses on developing computer vision systems to improve greenhouse agriculture. His project integrates a computer vision system with machine learning into robots that detect diseases in greenhouse fruits and count each unique fruit in real-time. This project benefits the local community by enabling producers to focus on delivering high-quality products and plan sales efficiently.
Fostering Innovation and Social Progress
Alia Jamal Saleh AbdulKhaleq, a Palestinian junior studying Interior Design at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), is using her education to merge creativity with compassion. Her upcoming thesis explores arts-based interior design interventions to help patients of all ages cope with post-traumatic stress, including those affected by conflict.
For Alia, the QF scholarship has been pivotal in pursuing her creative and humanitarian goals. It has opened doors to new opportunities and allowed her to focus on projects that merge creativity with humanitarian value. Her vision aligns with Qatar’s national mission to link innovation with social progress.
As QF continues to support its scholars, the next step will be to monitor the impact of the Tamaiuz and Tafawq scholarships on the students and the community. The success of these programs will depend on the continued support of QF and its partner universities, with the goal of empowering students to contribute meaningfully to Qatar’s future. According to Al Derham, the scholarships will continue to provide students with equal opportunities tailored to their needs, enabling them to make a positive impact. The future of these programs looks promising, with the potential to make a lasting difference in the lives of QF students and the broader community.
