The German Fulbright Alumni Association
Last month, about 50 Fulbright scholars assembled in Frankfurt am Main for the first annual Fulbright Diversity Weekend. Latham and Watkins LLP along with the German Fulbright Alumni Association graciously hosted the event, which focused on promoting racial, religious, economic, and gender diversity in the corporate world and educational institutions of both Germany and the United States. Continue reading “Fulbright Diversity Weekend, January 13-14”
Global Colleagues attempts to match multidisciplinary poverty scholars in one-to-one partnerships and encourages participants to collaborate, to share reading recommendations and research insights, information on conferences, workshops as well as to offer introductions to research networks where appropriate. Partnerships are established for the duration of one year, renewable for further one-year periods by mutual consent.
In 2015, Global Colleagues brought together 68 participating scholars from 31 countries, also thanks to the help of many volunteers. In 2016, Mr. Lepenies, a post-doctoral fellow at Free University/WZB Berlin who spent a Fulbright year at Yale University, plans to attract funding as well as gain institutional partners and thereby expand and professionalize the program for its participants. His hope is that through this program, poverty research can become inclusive and global and that in turn, policy designed to eliminate poverty is influenced by a diversity of voices.
For more information on Global Colleagues visit
gc.academicsstand.org
The participants and their geographical distribution
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zxavS2Anlgm8.kNv4t9t9VDLM
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY, February, 2015 – T
Mr. Wolf, a political scientist and former Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, explains his volunteer engagement with the necessity of critical, and balanced perspectives on international relations. Since its launch in 2003 the Atlantic Review has published more than 1.000 articles on topics like Iraq, the war on terrorism, NATO, but also economics and pop cultural issues related to transatlantic relations. Current issues such as human rights, freedom of speech, and privacy, have been debated by hundreds of readers and commentators, providing a basis for understanding differences and commonalities alike.
Please follow the link to Atlantic Review.
The Mulert Award on Mutual Understanding 2014 is bestowed to Oksana Buzhdygan and her project “Environmental Education and Outreach for School-Age Students”. Ms. Buzhdygan receives the award for her enrichment seminars with school teachers in rural areas of her home country, the Ukraine. Ms. Buzhdygan, an eco scientist and assistant professor at Chernivtsi National University, started her project in direct response to massive ecological changes and the lack of educational measures to raise public consciousness for environmental quality.
Together with faculty members Ms. Buzhdygan organizes practical training courses for school teachers, focusing on areas of the Ukraine where resources for education are scarce and where the impact of deforestation to the inhabitants is immediate. The purpose of the long-term project is to connect professional ecologists with the community in order to heighten awareness of the science of ecology and local environmental issues. Seminar participants share their experience with colleagues in their schools as well as from adjacent villages and use their experience in class in order to provide knowledge beyond the conventional curricula.
While her undertaking is a major challenge in the Ukraine, Ms. Buzhdygan also provides opportunities for teachers and students to access expanded sources of information and exchange through the project’s website. It is her hope that the ecological education she provides will act as a catalyst to create a new and much needed discourse on the environment.
| 2004 – 2005 | Master (Ecology and environmental management), Dept. of the General & Experimental Ecology, Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine |
| 2005 – 2008 | Ph.D. (Ecology), Dept. Ecology & Biomonitoring, Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine |
| 2010 – 2011 | Fulbright Grantee (Fulbright Faculty Development Program), Odum School of Ecology & Faculty of Engineering, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA |
| 2011 – 2012 | Post-Doc. Odum School of Ecology & Faculty of Engineering, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA |
| 2007 – Present | Present Assistant-Professor. Dept. Ecology & Biomonitoring, Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine |
| 2013 – Present | Post-Doc. (Erasmus-Mundus Grantee), Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. |
The German Fulbright Alumni Association is pleased to announce that this year’s Juergen Mulert Memorial Award on Mutual Understanding is bestowed to Sherief El-Helaifi and the project “Schuelerpaten Berlin”. The Mulert Award is given annually to volunteers, artists, professionals, or researchers across disciplines whose work reflects and advances Senator Fulbright’s idea of “waging peace through mutual understanding”. The award will be presented on February 2, 2013, at the German Fulbright Alumni Association’s annual Winter Ball in Hannover, where Sherief El-Helaifi will be a guest of honor and present the “Schuelerpaten” project.
El-Helaifi, currently a B.A. student at the Berlin Institute of Technology, spent a Fulbright exchange year at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011/12, where he focused on Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. “Schuelerpaten Berlin”, which El-Helaifi supported as co-founder, board member and head of public relations, is a unique project which focuses on the process of cultural exchange and awareness. Geared specifically to young people of Arabic descent, “Schuelerpaten Berlin” organizes tutorings between mentors and mentees. Mentors, usually university and doctorate students, are matched with young people from Arab families. Tutoring takes place in the privacy of the mentee’s home, opening up a whole new world to the mentor and facilitating intercultural education of both mentor and mentee.
Since its start in 2009, “Schuelerpaten” has created more than 220 tutoring partnerships and has thus been instrumental in broadening the public discourse surrounding issues of integration in Germany. In 2013, El-Helaifi plans to expand “Schuelerpaten Berlin” to the Ruhr region, and later to other regions, as well. El-Helaifi, who himself has both German and Arab roots, explains the need for such a program: “As the child of a Muslim Egyptian father and a Christian German mother, I grew up learning to appreciate and embrace two religions and two very different cultures. Sometimes I felt that I was pressured to decide whether I am Egyptian or German, although I just felt as both. But I realized how hard it is to integrate if nobody takes you by the hand and explains cultural differences.”
According to Benjamin Becker, president of the German Fulbright Alumni Association, “the idea of ‘Schuelerpaten’ is both simple and revolutionary, and promotes the growth of volunteerism in Germany”. The statistics are testimony to the success of “Schuelerpaten Berlin”: In a survey conducted in 2011, over 68% of mentees said that their grades had improved dramatically through the “Schuelerpaten” program. 79% had a better understanding of school tasks, 79% had learned and incorporated crucial organizational skills, and 74%, felt more self-confident. Overall, 90% of the mentees surveyed were more than satisfied with their mentors.
Winner of the 2012 “Juergen Mulert Memorial Award on Mutual Understanding” is Mr. Janosch Delcker and his project “Urban Observations”.
Mr. Delcker realized a series of short videos in which he portrays artists in New York City and Berlin, respectively. The German Fulbright Alumni Association chose “Urban Observations” for its ability to esthetically foster William Fulbright’s idea of “waging peace through mutual understanding”.
The award ceremony will be held in Schwerin during the Association’s Winter Ball.
Urban Obserations
Mulert Award Winning Art Project
The Protagonists
The featured artists were supposed to represent a cross section of artists working in the respective city. Urban Observations, therefore, included various genders, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and ages. The youngest one is in his late 20s, the oldest one in her early 60s. Some of them are very established, some of them up-and-coming. Some of them are natives to their cities, some of them from other parts of the country; some of them are foreigners living in the city.
Featured Artists
1. Drag Queens: Linda Simpson (New York), Gina Tonic (Berlin)
2. Cartoonists: Isaac Littlejohn Eddie (New York), Ulli Lust (Berlin)
3. Curator: Andrianna Campbell (New York), Nico Anklam (Berlin)
4. Filmmaker: Joshua Sanchez (New York), Stephanie von Beauvais (Berlin)
5. Author: Wickham Boyle (New York), Anton Waldt (Berlin)
6. Painter: Benjamin Weber (New York), Chris Winter (Berlin)
Janosch Delcker on Urban Oberservations
Christoph Janosch Delcker, M.A.
born October 22, 1985, is a video journalist based in Berlin and Brooklyn, New York. Heʼs produced and published videos for i.a. Spiegel Online, The New York Times, ZDF Online, and dpa (Deutsche Presse Agentur). Furthermore, he has published print articles in i.a. European Voice (The Economist), Die Tageszeitung (taz) and Idealist Magazine.
He holds a Bachelorʼs degree in Literature, Music and Media from Humboldt-University, Berlin, and Universidad de Salamanca, Spain. In 2009/10, he spent one year on a Fulbright scholarship at the Department of German at New York University, where he finished his Masterʼs degree in German Literature and Media in May 2011.
Since then, heʼs been working as a freelance video journalist in Berlin, Germany.
Abstract of the Mulert Award paper 2010/2011
In a time of global economic downturn and political crisis in the Middle East the very ideas of development aid and poverty reduction have been seriously challenged. The classical arguments for poverty reduction (to fight violence and terrorism, democracy promotion, moral obligation etc) seem not to be adequate any more to prevent an identity crisis within the endeavour of global development policy. The question is: Why do we and should we engage in development aid and poverty reduction? Regrettably the answer is not as clear as it used to be. This essay tries to engage the devils advocate and to find appropriate responses to the onsets brought against poverty reduction and to make way for a new “Why” of development policy.