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.
Exchange programs administered under the U.S. Department of State are being pushed to give special consideration to applicants from regions and populations susceptible to foreign manipulation, as stated in an amendment to the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act (S.2943).
The international education community is being called to promote the values of openness and inclusion as a way to combat the “unwelcoming political rhetoric” surrounding the U.S. presidential election, according to the PIE News.
Achievements and further expansions in exchange programs between citizens of the United States and the People’s Republic of China were discussed by top diplomats at the China-U.S. Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE) last week in Beijing.
Throughout the seventh annual high-level meetings, co-chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, top government officials met with participants of past exchange programs and expressed strong support for the continuation of these initiatives.
Ahead of the G-7 Summit taking place this week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that over the next five years Japan will accept 150 Syrians as exchange students, rather than refugees, allowing them to attend Japanese universities.