The President’s Fund has announced plans to implement a scholarship program to safeguard the education of children residing in Sri Lanka whose parents working abroad have died, become disabled, or gone missing due to various circumstances.

Driven by the principle of “Leaving No One Behind in Education”, the initiative will be jointly implemented by the Presidential Fund, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Employment and Tourism, and the Foreign Employment Bureau.

The decision was revealed during a recent meeting at the Presidential Secretariat, chaired by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism, Vijitha Herath, Senior Additional Secretary to the President, and Secretary to the Presidential Fund, Roshan Gamage, where the expansion of the Fund’s services was discussed.

The primary objective of the program is to ensure the uninterrupted and secure education of children in Sri Lanka whose parents working overseas are affected by unforeseen tragedies.

The sole eligibility criterion is that the affected individual must be a Sri Lankan national.

A comprehensive set of guidelines for awarding the scholarships will be released in due course.

The President’s Fund has already introduced a similar scholarship program for children of those who have died as a result of elephant attacks, and plans are underway to extend the initiative across various sectors in the future.