Global Leader Improves The Lives Of Children In Rural China

Shanghai-born PhD student Joy Jie Yang is one of the youngest instructors in the Economics Department at UCLA, having already studied law at Fudan University and earned a BA from the University of Hong Kong. However, it is not only her academic prowess, but her leadership ability that has won her international recognition.

After being selected as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader in 2001, she cofounded the Rural China Education Foundation, a nonprofit established by overseas Chinese. She organized the annual RCEF summer teaching program and recruited more than 150 volunteers, benefiting some 600 children in 6 provinces. In 2006, she received a grant from the Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program's Social Entrepreneurship Fund for her work at RCEF, and spent part of her summer teaching rural immigrants' children in Beiwu village, with volunteers from all over the world.

Ms. Yang says, "Our vision is to influence minds through direct people-to-people contact, and make quality education in rural communities an integral part of the rural development strategies of both."

Humphrey Fellowship Fuels Social Entrepreneurship

During his year at MIT's urban and regional studies program, Illac Diaz gained the knowledge, colleagues, and mentors needed to put his passion for sustainable systems and technologies to work easing the poverty in his native Philippines. Illac and his team won the Development Prize in the prestigious MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition for their CentroMigrante project to provide clean, safe and affordable urban housing for the thousands of Filipinos who come to Manila to look for jobs as seamen.

Illac says, "My year away from work through the Humphrey Program allowed me to interact and collaborate with some of the most amazing people at the MIT. Now, I have more capacity to engage in my mission of social entrepreneurship in the Philippines."

Iraqi Professor Saved by IIE's Scholar Rescue Fund Teaches U.S. Students and Speaks Out for Threatened Scholars in Iraq

Virtually overnight, this Iraqi scholar became an editor without a paper and a professor without students when zealots bombed Iraq's only English-language weekly, and students chanted death threats at the university where he was a dean. Then he awoke one day to find cars outside with Kalashnikov rifles pointing at his house. In 2006, SRF partnered with Duke University to support a visiting fellowship to provide a safe haven. In the U.S., the professor teaches Arabic literature and culture to American students, and advocates for the safety of his colleagues in Iraq.

Gilman Scholarship Enables Student to Pursue and Share Her Dreams

Spelman student LiShaun Francis says that volunteering at the local orphanage and making friends from South Africa has given her a greater appreciation for what she has here at home. Mentoring teenage girls in a Sister-to-Sister program in the U.S., she draws on her experience in South Africa. When the girls ask how she was able to afford study abroad, she tells them about the Gilman Scholarships, so that they might be able to study abroad when they are in college.

"I was honored to be able to share my experience with them and hopefully encourage them to pursue similar dreams," she says. After seeing the benefits of international study, LiShaun now has set her sights on a career in international education policy.