On this date in 1946, President Harry Truman signed Public Law 79-584, establishing the Fulbright Program!
Do you have a favorite Fulbright memory? Share your #Fulbright70 story with us via social media today!
Alex Counts, 1988-1989, Bangladesh, crossing a bamboo bridge at the time of the 1989 monsoon during his Fulbright year
From my earliest days contemplating my responsibilities as a global citizen, I have believed that entrepreneurship, and in particular social entrepreneurship, had major roles to play in realizing a better world. For this reason, I was attracted to the idea of microfinance and one of its earliest and most successful examples: the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. This innovative financial institution, which served and was owned by this nation’s poor women, was both an entrepreneurial venture itself that made a modest profit most years, but was also an engine of spurring micro-entrepreneurship on a massive scale through the hundreds of millions of business loans it has provided.
Indeed, I have come to believe that one of the surest paths to sustainable and large-scale social change is to incorporate the discipline of the private sector into empowerment strategies. The Grameen Bank and, later, its affiliated companies, was a shining example of this. During my studies at Cornell, I began a correspondence with Professor Muhammad Yunus, Grameen’s founder, about how I could join forces with him to promote his success model at the international level. He welcomed me to come to Bangladesh after graduation to begin our collaboration.
Katelyn Leader, 2013-2014, J. William Fulbright – Hillary Rodham Clinton Fellow to Haiti (second from left), with her colleagues from the Haitian government’s Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation
I believe that mutual understanding is the foundation of tolerance and peace; it can only develop, however, when people are willing to listen to and learn from one another. This is such a simple notion, and yet time and time again, we see the consequences of it being forgotten by leaders and individuals.
In September 2013, I arrived in Haiti as a J. William Fulbright – Hillary Rodham Clinton Public Policy Fellow. I was placed in the government’s Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation, where I was assigned to the Division of Territorial Planning and Local and Regional Development. Over the course of my fellowship, my primary responsibility was to design and implement a study examining urban expansion in an area north of Port-au-Prince known as Canaan. Unpopulated at the time of the 2010 earthquake, Canaan now hosts more than 100,000 people. Many live in substandard, makeshift shelters without access to basic services. My colleagues and I conducted over 100 interviews with individuals living in this area, and the perspectives and information that they shared offered valuable insight into the country’s housing and urban planning challenges.
Ryan Stock, 2014-2015, India (right), with his wife lighting a paper lantern during Uttarayan festival in Gujarat, India
We all know that receiving a Fulbright grant is a rare honor. When I received mine, I was ecstatic! But sometimes, you just have to throw it to the wind. Let me explain.
Every year in January, the city of Ahmedabad, India, has the International Kite Festival. During the Hindu holiday of Uttarayan, millions of Gujaratis spend an entire weekend flying kites! Mothers, children, uncles, doctors, grandparents and priests all unite on rooftops and open fields to celebrate. Absolutely no one is too cool to fly a kite. The sides of streets and shop fronts are lined with kites of all colors and fabrics, children with fistfuls of change buying kites by the dozen. Each kite is unique, some even displaying the faces of Bollywood heroes and heroines. Each string is delicately encrusted with crushed glass, so that kite pilots can tangle their strings until one is cut through, leaving the opponent to suffer a slow descending death. Kite fight! The sky is a battlefield, but you’d never suspect it by the joyous faces and comradery below the strings.
Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy, visiting Florence
Last month, scientists in the LIGO and Virgo scientific collaborations announced the second direct detection of gravitational waves, from the orbit and merger of a pair of black holes. The event, named GW151226, arrived in the early morning on the day after Christmas, and has been nicknamed the “Boxing Day event” by the collaborations. With a second event in hand, gravitational wave science has moved beyond the era of sensational first detection, and is evolving into a reliable tool for astronomy and physics.
I recently finished my Fulbright year working at the Virgo gravitational wave observatory outside of Pisa, Italy. The last time Virgo listened for gravitational wave was in 2011, and since then, the instrument has been off-line for a complete upgrade.
At Virgo, I’m part of the team of scientists who are putting the final touches on the upgrade. To borrow a phrase from James Merrill, our job is to make wholeness out of hodgepodge: we’re creating a functional detector from the precision equipment that has been designed and built over the last five years. We plan to have the detector on-line this winter, in time to join the two LIGO observatories in the United States as they listen for gravitational waves.
Davíd Morales, 2013-2014, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Ecuador
I was desperately trying to hold on to a dream when I decided to apply to the Fulbright Program. In high school, I became madly in love with my Mexican and Latin American heritage; I longed to live in Latin America, to travel through the different regions, to experience different cultures, and to hear people’s stories and struggles in order to better understand myself and better understand and help my own diverse migrant community in San Diego. In 2013, after being the first person in my family to graduate from a university, I was given an opportunity to fulfill this dream.
I was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student grant to serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Ecuador. For ten months, I lived in Guayaquil, the country’s largest city, and worked with university students at Universidad Laica Vicente Rocafuerte who were studying to become English teachers. I facilitated English classes, workshops, and seminars on topics such as U.S. history, culture, and academic writing, and my experiences as a person of color allowed me to combat stereotypes that students had about “Americans” and life in the United States. Fulbright was also an opportunity to gain practice as an educator. As an ETA, I gained valuable skills by working with university students and developing culturally appropriate activities. My experiences reinforced my belief in education as a powerful tool for promoting mutual understanding and social change.