Dear,

UoPeople's new academic year is off to a fantastic start.

The university's enrollment continues to grow and now totals 152,933 students from 209 countries. This record-breaking number includes 29,382 students studying in our Arabic programs, 18,824 refugees, and 4,778 Afghan women.

UoPeople has been awarded a grant of more than $750,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help the university expand its innovative model by increasing access and better outcomes for Black, Latino, Indigenous and low-income students in the United States. Both the Gates Foundation and UoPeople believe that our university can make a major difference in the lives of these students.

Last month marked the third anniversary of the Taliban's return to power. Since then, more than 35,000 Afghan women have applied to UoPeople and nearly 4,800 are currently studying with us. We would love to have the resources to accommodate all these students as UoPeople has become an educational lifeline to Afghan women by providing them the opportunity to study online from the safety of their homes.

Recent media coverage of our efforts to support Afghan women include stories by CNN and the Associated Press. You can read these stories and more below, including one about Olympic superstar Simone Biles.

Please join me in wishing all our new and returning students great success in their academic studies this year!