The Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), a program launched by President Barack Obama in 2010 to empower young entrepreneurial African leaders, is holding its 2016 Presidential Summit in Washington D.C. this week. The Summit welcomes 1,000 fellows from the initiative’s flagship program, the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF), double the number of fellows in the 2014 inaugural cohort.
The recently appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Honorable Theresa May, is an alumna of the 2004 cohort of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), according to Meridian, one of the partners implementing the premier program.
Dozens of officials from colleges and universities in the United States have traveled to Cuba in order to strengthen and restore cultural ties, a goal that the U.S. has been trying to achieve for many years now due largely to new partnerships forming between higher education institutions in both nations, according to Education Dive.
The House of Representative’s Committee on Appropriations released the 2017 fiscal year report for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs. The Committee recommended a total of $602.79 million for Educational and Cultural Exchange programs. In total, the Committee recommendations for Academic programs totaled $311,441 million, while Professional and Cultural Exchanges totaled $208,240 million.
Please see below for more details on the Committee Report:
As published in The Sun News on July 24, 2016
Dear Editor,
Your recent story entitled “J-What? Foreign Students Work Their Way into Carolina Culture” seems intent on maligning a very important cultural exchange program despite the positive views of the participants quoted in the article and recent improvements to the program.