Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program (ETA) alumna Erika Mork (South Korea, 2001-2002) saw a need in her community of Lynchburg, Virginia, where she works with non-profits to help them build their capacity and fulfill their missions to better serve their communities. As in many small cities across America, composting services are not readily available in Lynchburg. After attending the Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminar (TIES) on Climate Change, Digital Technology, and Global Affairs in California in 2016, Erika teamed up with Fulbright-Hays Program alumna Dr. Maria Nathan, who is a management professor at Lynchburg College, along with other college faculty and the executive director of a local farm to launch a composting pilot in Lynchburg.
Made possible through an Alumni TIES small grant, their project, Building Soil and Community: An Educational Composting Pilot, aimed to reduce the production of greenhouse gases while restoring the nutrient cycle by making composting more readily available to the citizens of Lynchburg. But it was more than a composting project -- it was about building community awareness. The project brought together students and faculty from local colleges, local volunteers, and Lynchburg Grows, a non-profit urban farm. Over eight workshops, the project educated 280 community members about composting and its tie to the larger food system. Volunteers donated more than 2,736 hours of their time to the project.
While the TIES grant has ended, community composting continues in Lynchburg and composting education has been integrated into other programs at the Lynchburg Grows farm. The project has kept more than two tons of food scraps from individuals and restaurants out of landfills.
According to the Director of Lynchburg Grows, “Everyone is involved. They bring their buckets back every week and they dump it in and they’re excited about seeing how many pounds they have that week.” She added, “It’s great that the climate is changing in Lynchburg as far as that goes and I’m excited to be a part of that.”
Alumni Thematic Exchange Seminars (TIES) are regionally-focused gatherings for U.S. government-sponsored exchange program alumni. Participants explore issues of shared value, receive training, and collaborate with fellow alumni to implement projects upon their return home. Through the small grants initiative, alumni have the opportunity to take action and make a positive difference in their communities.
What do an award-winning entrepreneur in Chicago, an employment promotion expert in Egypt, an executive director of an assistive technology company in Hawaii, and a Police Chief in Brazil all have in common? In addition to being leaders in their professional fields and working tirelessly to improve their communities, they are also this year’s Professional Fellows Alumni Impact Award winners.
The Professional Fellows Program is a two-way, global exchange program designed to promote mutual understanding, enhance leadership and professional skills, and build lasting, sustainable partnerships between emerging leaders from foreign countries and the United States. The Professional Fellows Program brings emerging leaders from around the world to the United States for intensive 5-6 week fellowships designed to broaden their professional skills and expertise. American participants who have hosted foreign fellows then travel overseas for participant-driven reciprocal programs. In the past seven years, more than 3,700 participants around the world have taken part in the Professional Fellows Program.
So what makes a Professional Fellows Alumni Impact Award winner? These alumni completed their programs and then used the knowledge, experience, and skills they gained during their exchange to make an even greater impact on their communities. These winners represent the spirit of Professional Fellows and continue to use their global perspective to improve the lives of others.
Barbara Fischlowitz-Leong is Executive Director of Assistive Technology Resource Centers of Hawaii (ATRC), an NGO whose mission is to link persons with disabilities with technology and empower individuals through its use. She is responsible for drafting Hawaii’s Warranty Act, which protects purchases of assistive technology in the state, and an administrative requirement that mandates all state government agencies include language for assistive technology in all appropriate policies. She has participated as both a host and a fellow, traveling to Turkey, Armenia, and Singapore. From meeting with visually impaired lawyers in Turkey to teaching university classes in Armenia, each exchange experience was unique and had a profound impact on her work and life.
Amira Hassan is a Long Term Expert at Employment Promotion Program GIZ Egypt, which provides services for sustainable development and education, such as career guidance and online resources to increase youth employment. Amira did her exchange in 2014 in Pennsylvania with Philadelphia Works and Hands Along the Nile, learning new theories on labor market analysis and how to provide online support to job seekers. Inspired by what she learned in the U.S., and with continued support from her host organization, she created an online platform that is used in 240 schools by over 10,000 students in Egypt. Not stopping there, she worked with an evaluator to make improvements and is developing a mobile application so that even more students have access to this platform and the resources they need to find employment.
Scott L. Stewart is the co-founder of Project Tech Teens in Chicago, an innovative mobile app foundry where students in underserved communities can learn computer programming while launching scalable and profitable businesses. Among his many accomplishments, he is also the CEO of a multimedia production company, author, and award-winning educator. In 2016 he hosted and mentored two Professional Fellows cohorts, and then travelled to continue his role as a mentor and support youth employment initiatives in their countries. From speaking at an Entrepreneurship Summit in Slovenia, to spending a week in Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrating low and high-tech methods of teaching computer programming to youth, Scott has continued his commitment to supporting global partnerships to empower youth in the U.S. and abroad.
Margareth Travessoni is Police Chief of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, the second most populous state in the country. During her 2012 fellowship she worked with the Government of Indiana and learned about the state’s focus on government transparency and accountability. Inspired by the experiences during her exchange, she returned to Brazil and developed and launched a user-friendly online portal for the citizens of her state, providing them with access to important public information such as government revenues and expenditures, employee salaries, and the state budget. She’s now working to expand that transparency even further by providing crime statistics online, enabling police forces across the country to be better prepared to respond to crime and empowering citizens to better understand how their tax dollars are spent.
From Egypt to Hawaii, Chicago to Brazil, these Professional Fellows are demonstrating the transformative power of exchanges on individuals and society, and inspiring others with their continued work. Congratulations to the 2017 Professional Fellows Alumni Impact Award winners!
Do you ever wish your neighborhood was cleaner and safer, and that you knew more of your neighbors? These are a few of the wishes San Francisco teens expressed to university student “hackers” from across the country at citizenAR, a State Department-funded hackathon — a tech design challenge — and tech carnival.
On Sept 30, 2017, 12 interdisciplinary teams from universities around the nation imagined new ways of engaging city-dwellers in making their environment more sustainable, just, and livable using augmented reality in fun, social, and gaming ways. The event was held in partnership with The Salvation Army Kroc Center in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco — one of the most challenging neighborhoods in the city and nation.
The event was initiated by a team including a Fulbright Scholar, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, and two Critical Language Scholars. They came up with the idea at an Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminar (Alumni TIES) in September 2016, which brought together U.S. alumni from a wide variety of State Department exchange programs around the themes of global affairs, climate change, and the digital age. Alumni TIES is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and implemented by World Learning through a cooperative agreement. The program brings alumni of U.S. government-sponsored exchanges together to participate in seminars focused on key regional issues. Participants then have the opportunity to apply for small grants to implement projects that make a positive impact in their community.
Through networking with professionals from a diversity of fields, the team realized that little had been done to apply emerging, immersive technologies to solve problems of climate change — urban sustainability in particular.
During the hackathon, teams met with tech, business, and urban sustainability leaders from across the Bay Area through a variety of panel discussions and one-on-one meetings.
“There was a lot of mutual learning, from mentor to participant and vice versa,” says Nels Nelson, a senior planner at Stantec and founding member of the event organizing team.
The collegiate hackers also spent time with teens and other residents from the Tenderloin neighborhood to gain first-hand insights into the livability and environmental challenges they face on a daily basis. Their top complaint was they were tired of walking past trash and navigating around drug deals.
“Our teens benefited the most as they felt valued to be part of the event that focused on the Tenderloin,” says Major Raymond Erickson-King, Administrator of the Salvation Army Kroc Center.
Community members try out new virtual reality experiences at the tech carnival.
In order to extend the benefits of the hackathon to the community, a simultaneous tech carnival was held in the Kroc Center gymnasium. The carnival provided the local youth and families access to the fun, cutting-edge immersive technologies that the hackers were using to design solutions. At the fair, kids of all ages donned virtual reality headsets and explored new worlds as their friends eagerly awaited their turns to test out the next experience.
“It was fun and rewarding to watch the kids experiencing these emerging technologies at the carnival,” says Julia Beabout, president of Qiao LLC, and founding member of the event organizing team.
A number of tech and sustainability nonprofit organizations also participated in the tech carnival. Through these, Tenderloin residents were able to connect with tech education and sustainability initiatives in their neighborhood and beyond. More than 20 generous organizations donated their time and resources to make the tech carnival a success.
Audience members watch the hackathon pitch sessions at the The Salvation Army Kroc Center in San Francisco.
At the end of the carnival, the university teams pitched their best ideas from the hackathon to a panel of judges in a heated competition. Of the dozen teams participating, there were four winners: UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley’s School of Information Systems, UC Davis’ Hackers Club, and the Academy of Art University (AAU). The ideas resulting from the daylong event were creative and highly relevant to addressing the need for cleaner, safer public spaces.
Winning solutions include apps that allow teens to report incidents of urban blight to local authorities and navigate their neighborhood safely. Others created a series of virtual commons in safe locations throughout the neighborhood and allowed residents to express how they felt about different places at different times with emoji-like icons.
The prizes for the winning teams include augmented reality trophies by Novaby.com and a variety of mentoring and pitch sessions from Deloitte Digital, The Miller Center, and the SF Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation (MOCI). Kroc Center youth will be invited to observe and participate in the follow-on mentoring sessions.
All hackathon participants are also eligible to apply for a $10,000 grant to move their social good, community-oriented augmented reality app ideas forward. The grant will prioritize projects that involve the Kroc youth from the Tenderloin. Additionally, the Make School has offered five scholarships to their summer boot camp: two for the university students and three for Kroc youth.
“The hackathon showed how technology can be applied to raise the quality of life for the residents of the Tenderloin and address the most pressing social issues,” says Laureen Heinz, senior manager at Deloitte Digital.
In order to sustain that impact and the impact of the event, a nonprofit initiative called Tech in the Tenderloin (TNT) has been established in partnership with the Salvation Army’s Kroc Center. TNT will expand career imaginations and opportunities for youth and families in our nation’s most challenging neighborhoods by connecting them with emerging tech through fun, innovative activities and educational programming. The team is already working on planning their first season of tech programming at the Kroc Center.
A common theme throughout Ama Diaka’s work as a spoken word poet is the challenge of being a female professional artist. As she confronts this challenge in her own life, she has dedicated herself to supporting the voices and livelihoods of other female artists in Accra. Her experience on OneBeat reinforced her commitment to supporting female artists, inspiring her to launch Black Girls Glow, an initiative to foster collaboration among women artists and explore ways that art can build community.
In 2016, Ama visited the United States for a OneBeat program focused on Musical Migration, exploring how large movements of people have shaped music and how musicians encourage dialogue, community resilience, and rootedness in situations of displacement and upheaval. The experience involved collaboration with other artists for a month of performances, discussions, and interactive music events. When she returned home, she replicated the OneBeat model with female artists in her own country. She launched Black Girls Glow, bringing six artists, mainly vocalists, from around Ghana for an intensive two-day residency just outside of Accra. During these two days, the artists created new work, using musical exercises such as round robins, soundpainting, and “quick-draw” duos and trios. Ama also secured producers around Accra and hosted the artists to develop and produce the 12-track album Mother of Heirs. After hosting a listening session for Mother of Heirs in June, where she auctioned off three commissioned, donated pieces of original artwork from local artists, Ama used the funds raised to put on a live performance of the album, bringing together a live set by DJ Keyz, one of the album’s producers, with a five-member band. The concert was billed as one of the best of the year.
“Being selected for OneBeat 2016 was an experience that honed my craft and increased my desire to do more with my art,” recalls Ama. “It only seemed right that together with fellow poet Dzyadzorm, Black Girls Glow, modeled after OneBeat, would come to life. Black Girl Glow is a concept that aims to raise the profile of female artists locally, regionally and globally by highlighting and showcasing the brilliant and talented young female artists making waves in the Ghanaian entertainment industry.”
Ama emphasizes, “This platform is important because it is necessary to honor the hard work and dedication that female entertainers put into their art to get noticed in an industry so dominated by male presence. Six artists - three vocalists, two poets, one rapper - Adomaa, Cina Soul, Ria Boss, Dzyadzorm and myself - came together to create original music.” Although it had no initial funding, the project took off because some of the country’s most talented young producers and producers from Nigeria and Kenya contributed their creativity and talent. Three visual artists also generously donated original artwork, which they auctioned off at a listening session to raise funds for a live concert. “The project started off as a flicker, but it took an entire creative community to burn the torch. It is our hope that we can get the right support to be able to expand the potential of Black Girls Glow.”
Images courtesy of https://culartblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/concert-review-the-glow-never-faded-at-the-mother-of-heirs-concert/
