ISLAMABAD, JUL 13 (DNA) -Indonesian Embassy in Islamabad hosted a lively reception for the twenty awardees of the Darmasiswa and KNB scholarship programs on Saturday.

The recipients and the alumni of the two Indonesian government funded scholarships, officials of the Embassy with their families,  Director Human Resource Development Division, Higher Education Commission and some Indonesians studying in Islamabad attended the event.

Addressing the gathering, the Counsellor Cultural Affairs of the Embassy Deny Tri Basuki congratulated the scholarship recipients and elaborated that the Scholarships were a financial assistance offered by the Indonesian Government to international students coming from developing countries to pursue their academic programs at the Indonesian Universities.

He highlighted the importance of quality human resource and said that the mutual cooperation such as the KNB and Darmasiswa scholarships were good opportunities for the students to develop their vision, knowledge and competencies through educational ambitions and professional development in a broad range of fields.

Basuki noted with satisfaction that there was growing interest among the Pakistani students to pursue higher education programs in Indonesia.

He pleasingly shared that, encouraged by this positive and desired trend, the Government of Indonesia had increased the number of scholarship and this year awarded 20 scholarships for the Pakistani students.

He expressed his appreciation to the students coming from different cities of Pakistan and believed that the continued interaction will better facilitate the students and certainly pave the way forward in expanding greater cooperation in human resource development and deeper understanding of cultural diversity.

The Counsellor expressed hoped that the students having completed their study programs in Indonesia will not actively play more constructive role in the progress of Pakistan in many fields but help further strengthen friendly relationship between Indonesia and Pakistan.

Indonesian government annually awards two types of scholarships namely Darmasiswa and KNB that opens the opportunity for the potential students to experience life in the culturally most diverse nation in the world while studying their respective fields at the prominent universities in Indonesia.

The Darmasiswa program offers undergraduate scholarship to study Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Language), Indonesian art & culture, Indonesian culinary and Tourism studies while the KNB Program offers master level scholarships at the leading Indonesian Universities.

More recently, master and doctoral level scholarships offered by a number of Indonesian universities has also received very encouraging response from the Pakistani Students.=DNA

============