Thank you for your generous support of the Institute, which has benefitted more than 25,000 individuals from around the world in 2012. Your contributions made it possible for us to increase opportunities for young Americans to study abroad, provide emergency funding to Syrian students, train women entrepreneurs from the Middle East and North Africa, and rescue scholars threatened by conflict and repression. Your support changes lives and allows students and scholars to build a more peaceful and prosperous world. Please consider helping us to continue this important work with a year-end gift.
The Fulbright Program, which IIE administers on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, offers dynamic opportunities for students and scholars to address global challenges. Ryan, a recent Fulbright Fellow from the United States, studied post-disaster communities in Honduras built after Hurricane Mitch, which struck and devastated Central America in 1998. By examining these communities, Ryan hopes to improve the efficiency of post-disaster reconstruction, especially important in impoverished regions and important for our own country as well.
With your support, IIE’s Emergency Student Fund (ESF) provided urgently-needed resources to 46 students from Syria, where higher education has been devastated by the conflict and students both inside and outside the country face grave difficulties in continuing their education. These funds help students who face extreme financial need and the emotional turmoil of seeing friends and family back home being trapped, displaced or killed. As one student who received an ESF Syria grant recently said, it “will be a great support to my education and will help me stay focused on school in these difficult times through which my country and fellow citizens are passing.”
In 2012, IIE’s Center for Women's Leadership implemented the TechWomen program on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, bringing aspiring women leaders in technology sectors from the Middle East and North Africa together with their counterparts in Silicon Valley for professional mentorship. The 2012 cohort returned home recently to found tech start-ups, develop software, and create non-governmental organizations to empower women and girls in their communities. Rayane, an engineer from Lebanon, says the TechWomen experience “helped me to think big and work for a greater goal.”
This year marked the 10th anniversary of IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF), which has saved the lives and work of nearly 500 scholars from around the world. Among them is an SRF Fellow who fled Myanmar in 2009 due to persistent threats and harassment by the state for his advocacy of human rights. As the country re-opens, he recently returned to Myanmar and has resumed his work on a human rights-based approach to public health.
We hope that you will continue to invest in international education through a gift to IIE today.
With gratitude for your support and best wishes for the New Year,
Dr. Allan E. Goodman
President and CEO, Institute of International Education