There is a moment each spring when the campus of Forman Christian College comes fully alive.
Students cross the green lawns between classes. Conversation fills the courtyards. The afternoon light catches a simple chapel and cross visible against the Lahore sky, a quiet marker of what this institution has stood for since 1864.
This is not a scene most people picture when they think of higher education in Pakistan.
But this is Forman Christian College. A 160-year-old Christian university in the heart of Lahore, educating a predominantly Muslim student body. A place where faith and scholarship have coexisted across generations. Through wars, political upheaval, and the daily complexity of building understanding between communities that much of the world assumes cannot learn side by side.
This spring, on this campus, that work continues.
One Voice Among Many
Among the students walking on this campus is Maryam, a chemistry major in her final year.
She lives at home with her family commuting to campus each day as a day scholar. When she arrived at Forman, she described herself as someone who wasn’t naturally inclined to participate in group activities, hesitant to interact, uncertain of what lay ahead.
But through her involvement with the chapel office and the choir, something began to shift both academically and spiritually.
“Because of my visits to chapel, it’s also expanded my interaction with the people,” she says. “I think I have grown, my Christian life has grown in a very wonderful way.”
Today, Maryam stands in front of the chapel and speaks with clarity that would have been unimaginable to her younger self.
She is one student. But she is not an anomaly.
Maryam represents hundreds of students at Forman Christian College this semester who are receiving an education that does more than fill a transcript. It reshapes how they see themselves, their communities, and their futures.
What A Semester Looks Like
Spring 2026 at Forman is not a photograph frozen in time. It is a living institution, classrooms in session, mentors meeting students, research underway, and community learning to navigate differences with respect.
For Maryam, this semester has meant earning a 3.5 GPA, volunteering as an English teacher in the Forman Outreach Program for students from remote areas and serving in the Faculty Retreat Program as part of her community service. And through it all, she has kept showing up to class, to chapel, to choir.
“It has been a very wonderful and great experience at FC College,” she says. “It has broadened my horizons and my eye view.”
Before enrolling, Maryam already had a desire to attend Forman. What she found there confirmed something she already believed:
“Whatever I am and whatever I’m going to be is only with God. I’m nothing without God, Jesus Christ. I’m here just because of Jesus Christ.”
Across campus, the impact of scholarship support is visible in every classroom, every lab, and every conversation. Students who might otherwise never have reached a university are gaining access to rigorous academics, mentorship, and a community that stretches across faiths, regions, and life experiences.
This is the kind of transformation that does not happen in a single moment. It unfolds over semesters, in conversations, in the small accumulation of days spent learning alongside people who are different from you.
What Partnership Makes Possible
Every student on a scholarship at Forman Christian College is there because someone chose to invest in a future they would never fully see.
This past year, Maryam had the chance to meet one of those people face to face. For her, the moment was overwhelming.
“This scholarship helps me a lot. I still feel so blessed, because I don’t think that many people got this opportunity.”
Moments like these are what make the work of Friends of Forman tangible, a church partner standing on the campus where her investment landed, meeting the student it reached.
That investment is specific and measurable. When those students graduate, they return to their communities, some rural, some war-affected, some deeply conservative carrying an education that changes not only their trajectory, but the trajectory of the people around them.
Maryam will graduate soon. She hopes to pursue a PhD. And she is already thinking about what comes after, not what she will earn, but what she will return.
“If God will give me enough, I want to give back to the people,” she says. “Just like you and others. People who donated to the students who are in need. Hopefully in the future, if God will give me enough, I will give back to them.”
This is the work of Friends of Forman: to ensure that a 160-year-old institution in Lahore continues to do what it has always done. Educate across boundaries, develop leaders, and demonstrate that faith and learning belong together.
*All names and photos are changed to protect the identities of individual students.
This Spring, This Campus, This Moment
The videos arriving from campus this spring tell a story that statistics alone cannot be captured.
A young woman speaking confidently into a camera. Students walking between classes in the afternoon sun. The quiet backdrop of a chapel that has watched over this campus for generations.
They are evidence of something that has been working for 160 years and continues because of the people who believe it should.
Maryam said it best: “There are so many people who have everything in their lives, but they don’t give back and they don’t serve the people. I think in this era, it’s very important to stay that grounded and to be that grateful.”
We invite you to be part of what happens next.
Your support ensures that this campus remains a place where students who are ready and capable are not held back by circumstance but are instead given the opportunity to rise.
To learn more about how you can invest in students at Forman Christian College contact Friends of Forman.
*All names and photos are changed to protect the identities of individual students.