A meeting between Secretary BISP Mr. Omar Hamid Khan and
Chairman Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed was held in the
office of Chairman HEC. Senior officials of BISP and HEC were also present in
the meeting. In the opening remarks, Secretary BISP stated that BISP, being the
country’s premier social safety net programme and already in collaboration with
Harvard University and MIT, encourages researchers to use multi-dimensional
NSER data for their research especially related to Social Safety Net (SSN)
programmes. The research collaboration of BISP and other universities would link youth with various
BISP programs and its different data sets. BISP Research Wing would
facilitate them in designing policy oriented research.
Secretary BISP proposed that as scholarships are awarded
every year for direct Ph. D programs by HEC, it can fund 5 to 7 scholarships
annually for students who want to do research on BISP, at national or
international level. BISP would help and support research students throughout
their research by providing them office space, free of cost data access and 2
years of Internship.
Chairman HEC welcomed this initiative of BISP and assured
his full cooperation to facilitate and share this information with all
universities for research collaboration with BISP. He said that the fields
indentified by BISP’s Research Wing would provide a new scope of study and
would be helpful for Ph. D students. He ensured that HEC would connect BISP
with HEC Library of Publications, 60 Offices of Research, Innovation and
Commercialization (ORIC) and 20 Business Incubation Centers established at
different universities leading to platform for knowledge sharing and graduation
of BISP beneficiaries out of poverty. The two sides also discussed BISP’s idea
of establishing a think tank- BISP Research Incubation Cell (BRIC) - on Social
Protection comprising of members from around the world for poverty reduction in
Pakistan. HEC agreed to help BISP in approaching universities and research
centers in Pakistan and in the US, Europe and rest of the World for this
purpose.
The two sides agreed to work out the details of the
further collaboration in short as well as long term through a working group
including members from both of the organizations. In short term, HEC would
offer fellowships and thematic grants to the scholars who were interested to
work on BISP and in long term, BISP and HEC would collaborate for establishment
of platform for knowledge sharing and graduation of BISP beneficiaries out of
poverty.
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