IIE Has Issued 3,100+ Grants to Assist Students with Completing Their Education
NEW YORK, November 26, 2025 — The Institute of International Education (IIE) awarded 100 emergency grants totaling $200,000 to aid international students impacted by hurricanes, flooding, and war across East Africa, East and South Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East. Building on its 106-year legacy of protecting scholarship and access to higher education among high-achieving students and scholars worldwide, IIE distributes Emergency Student Fund (ESF) micro-grants to international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities when other means of financial support are temporarily or permanently unavailable due to crises in their home countries.
When emergencies strike, international students are particularly at risk of financial hardship. When their families stop earning income due to protracted crises, or businesses close or are destroyed, students are often left without immediate support for expenses like tuition, rent, or food. In addition, employment regulations for U.S.-based international students—including how many hours they can work and whether they can work off-campus—make it more difficult to stay afloat during an emergency. This is where IIE steps in, leveraging its 10,000-member IIENetwork to quickly identify and assist international students in need.
The ESF micro-grants will cover educational expenses and daily costs such as food, lodging, and other basic needs that their families might have otherwise covered.
IIE has disbursed more than 3,100 ESF grants since the program’s founding in 2010. Over the last five years, the ESF has issued 12 calls for student nominations in response to a range of crises including:
- Hurricane in the Bahamas, Haiti, and Jamaica (2025),
- Typhoons in China, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam (2025),
- Conflict and wars in Ukraine (2022, 2023, 2025), Sudan (2023, 2025), and Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank (2023, 2024),
- Earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria (2022) and Morocco (2023),
- Floods in Pakistan (2022, 2025), Libya (2023), and Bangladesh (2024),
- Political upheaval in Afghanistan (2021), Kenya (2024), and Venezuela (2024), and,
- Economic crises in Lebanon (2021) and Sri Lanka (2022).
IIE has been a leader in crisis response for the higher education community for more than 100 years, supporting displaced students and scholars during major 20th– and 21st-century conflicts including the war in Ukraine, the 2021 fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, and World War II. Please consider contributing to IIE’s Crisis Response which is deployed immediately to students, scholars, and artists where and when it’s needed most.