Emrah Kazaz, Bosnia and Herzegovina I’m one lucky guy. Why? I went camping for 5 days in Yellowstone and I had been in the U.S. only 11 days. During my preparation for arrival to the U.S., I knew that I was going to spend one semester at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. I did some online research about this area. …
Gerson Guevara, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities After participating on the Global UGRAD Program in 2008, I returned to Honduras with a completely different perspective and ideology, and I was an entirely different person. I began working as a teacher in a bilingual school in the mornings, and in the afternoons after school, I continued with my studies at university. …
It has been more than two weeks since I touched down at St. Paul International Airport. I was overwhelmed at the time by all the foreign noises rushing through my ears as I attempted not to look like a deer in the headlights of a thousand oncoming English-speaking buses. I checked the time on my phone: still Malaysian time, …
This summer, all of the incoming Global UGRAD participants took part in the Online Professional and Academic Learning Course (OPAL). OPAL was a seven-week online course developed and administered by the World Learning Global UGRAD team that covered a wide range of topics and themes that participants will most likely encounter during their time on the program. The OPAL course …
As an alum of the Global UGRAD Program, Achraf Boughzala didn’t waste any time after returning home from an academic year exchange at the University Of Utah. Once back in Tunisia, Achraf teamed up with other U.S. Department of State Exchange Alumni, who were equally passionate about digital learning and computer programming, to start their first-of-a-kind Education endeavor in Tunisia, the Young Tunisian …
Badri Ghimire, a 2014-15 Global UGRAD alum from Nepal, tells his story of attending Grand Valley State University. Born deaf, Badri speaks to his experience of being surrounded by students who were hearing. “I wondered, ‘How am I going to communicate with people?’ I didn’t know ASL [American Sign Language]. But there were many international students and they helped me …
For the first time in almost a decade, World Learning is not welcoming a large cohort of the best and the brightest from Serbia and Montenegro to U.S. campuses across the country. This is because the FORECAST-SAM and Global UGRAD-SAM Program came to end this past May. World Learning is proud to have supported 323 participants from Serbia and Montenegro …
By Batoul Jaikat, Jordanian Global UGRAD Alum 2015-16 When I was 18 years old, I started working as a receptionist at the first self-defense center for women only in Jordan and the Middle East. The idea of the center revolves around empowering women through self-defense and learning martial arts as a way of self-defense. As I was working there, I noticed …
May Pwint Shin, Burma After returning to my country, I was able to participate as an interpreter and secretary in two workshops with Scout Movements. The workshops were on Developing Membership Registration Systems and Drafting National Training Systems and were held from July 11 to 19, 2016 in Yangon. They were jointly organized by the Myanmar Scout Organization and the Scout Committee …