On 31 May 2016, Wafic Said and the trustees of the Said Foundation celebrated a new partnership with the Rhodes Trust at a dinner at Rhodes House. Also attending were trustees of Rhodes, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and the heads of several Oxford colleges, as well as current Rhodes and Said Scholars.
Wafic Said with Sir John Hood, Chairman of the Rhodes Trust
The partnership will enable the expansion of Rhodes Scholarships to the Foundation’s target countries, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine (with an emphasis on Syria). From 2017, two new Rhodes Scholars will come to Oxford every year from these countries to study for two to four years and become part of the global Rhodes community. Once this programme is fully established, there will be around six new Scholars in Oxford at any one time. The Said Foundation has endowed this programme in perpetuity with matching funding from Oxford University and some of its colleges. There will also be opportunities for collaboration between the Rhodes Scholar and Said Scholar communities.
Speaking at the dinner, Wafic Said said that the objective shared by both the Said Foundation and the Rhodes Trust was “to give access to students from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine to this astonishing global community of scholars and leaders.” He thanked the Chairman of the Rhodes Trust, Sir John Hood, for the role he had played in bringing this new partnership to fruition and added:
“At the heart of the Said Foundation is its own community of scholars from these same countries. We have supported over a thousand of them and are immensely proud of their achievements. We are now honoured to enable our most talented young people to become part of the Rhodes community. We believe that this will play a small part in helping our region to heal itself and to prosper. And we look forward to continuing and growing our cooperation with Rhodes long into the future.”
To see more about this story on the Rhodes House website, click here
And for the announcement by the Said Foundation, click here