Plans to build a Dh100 million (US$27.2m) university to help educate the poorest members of a Muslim sect have been unveiled.
The World Memon University could accept its first students in two and a half years, officials from the World Memon Organisation (WMO) announced yesterday at their seventh annual general meeting.
Memons are Sunni Muslims who originate from the Indian subcontinent and have a common language which is a version of Sindhi. There are an estimated two million around the world. Mohammad Toufique Amdani, the chairman of the organising committee of the WMO Vision 2008 conference in Dubai, said 50 per cent of places would be reserved for Memons.
The focus would be on educating Memons from poor backgrounds, 8,000 of whom the WMO had helped to send to other universities.“Rather than giving them cash, we like to give people from our community an education and to help them,” Mr Amdani said. “They should stand on their own two feet.”
Mr Amdani said the WMO was looking for a suitable site in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Ras al Khaimah, and that fund-raising for the project had already started.
The UAE was chosen as a location for the university, he said, because of its “easy access” for Indians and Pakistanis, who will make up a large proportion of the coeducational institution’s student body.
“We will open in the next two to two and a half years and we can then expand. I am really excited,” Mr Amdani said.
Subjects to be taught include accountancy, agriculture, engineering, biology, computer science, costume and fashion technology, home science, management, mass media and health care.
The WMO, which was founded in 2001 and is based in Dubai Aid and Humanitarian City, has helped to build more than 1,800 housing units for the underprivileged in Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.