Indonesia, the most populous country in Southeast Asia, is offering more than 600 scholarships to students from 105 countries to study in Indonesia for the academic year 2019-2020, the Education and Culture Ministry announced recently.

The scholarship is called the DARMASISWA program and is offered to foreign students to study in Indonesia for 10 to 12 months in 71 universities across Indonesia. This year, the government has offered the scholarship to 673 students from 105 countries.

“The main purpose of the DARMASISWA program is to promote and increase interest in the language, art and culture of Indonesia among youth of other countries. It has also been designed to produce stronger cultural links and understanding among participating countries,” the Education and Culture Ministry’s bureau of planning and international cooperation head, Suharti, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.

Sayonara: Recipients of 2018-2019 DARMASISWA scholarship (from left) Aisa Endo (Japan), Kadari Nagarjuna (India), Nozomi Imazeki (Japan) and Minori Sekizawa (back right also from Japan) pose for a photograph during the closing ceremony of DARMASISWA program in Surakarta, Central Java, recently. (Courtesy of Kadari Nagarjuna)

The recipients of DARMASISWA for the year 2018-2019 attended the closing ceremony in Surakarta, Central Java, earlier this week.

“I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Indonesian government for giving me the DARMASISWA scholarship. I learned the Indonesian language at Atmajaya Catholic University in Jakarta. I enjoyed my stay in Indonesia and the Indonesian people are very friendly,” Kadari Nagarjuna, a student from India, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

The scholarship was first offered only to students from ASEAN countries in 1974. In 1976, Indonesia began to offer it to students from any country that has diplomatic relations with Indonesia.