education

Thirty years ago, I arrived in China as a young American diplomat after the normalization of relations between the two countries. This summer, I returned to China to witness the vast changes that have taken place.

“Education is the manifestation of the perfection already within a person.” As I listened to the words of Sanjoy Ganguli, founder of the Jana Sanskriti movement and keynote speaker at a recent conference I attended, I couldn’t help but smile. I’ve always felt that development programs are best when motivated by participants rather than for them.

On behalf of IREX, I am pleased to announce that 22 diligent Azerbaijani students and their mentors won netbooks and flipcameras in a recent national contest for the ‘Best Research Essays Using Internet.' One hundred and sixty nine candidates entered from all over the country, notably Sumgait, Guba, Shirvan, Imishli, Ganja, Gazakh, Sheki, Zagatala, Ismayilli and Mingachevir. Plagiarism was penalised, with positive results.

Last week, 74 teachers from 15 countries around the world gathered in Washington DC for the International Leaders in Education Program (ILEP).

Today marks one year since the massive earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, devastating the population and setting back years of development. Over the past year, IREX worked closely with our Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program alumni in Haiti to support their outstanding efforts to rebuild their country. 

I recently participated in a roundtable, "Old and New Media in Russia Today," at the Annual Convention of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). The conference brings together political science, history, language, humanities, and other scholars and practitioners in the areas of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies from around the world.

While recently visiting sub-grantees of the BOTA Foundation in Almaty, Kazakhstan, I met a group of young adults who are developing their professional talents, despite never having had attended school and rarely having had the opportunities to leave their homes.  It is not that Almaty lacks schools; there are many schools of high quality that are developing a skilled workforce that is supporting their country’s economic growth.  Nor are they excluded from the education system based on their ethnic or linguistic aff

Maybe it was just luck that my bicycle tire blew out right in front of the bike repair stand in the Freedom Compound shanty town. I took that same road every time I travelled between my village and the town of Monze during my Peace Corps service in Zambia. I usually pedaled as quickly as I could through Freedom Compound in order to avoid all the beckoning calls of “Mzungu”, white person or foreigner. This time I had no choice but to stop. As soon as I slowed down I was rushed by people trying to help me. “No, no, it’s fine, I can manage myself” I told them.

There are 33.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS throughout the world. Today is World AIDS Day - a day of opportunity to raise awareness and educate about the disease which affects all nations at the most local level.

It’s not often that my work at IREX intersects with the Sundance Film Festival. Yet on September 24th, “Waiting for Superman,” a film about problems plaguing the American education system will hit theatres. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film garnered the Audience Choice award at Sundance this year. Notably, it situates American schools in an international context.