VIA Snackable Updates
2016 Issue #3
Social Enterprise in Cambodia Nominated for Award
VIA Cambodia alum Katie Halleran's social enterprise was nominated as a finalist for the World Travel and Tourism Council's Tourism for Tomorrow award. Kinyei runs a cafe, community bike tours, and workshops in Battambang, Cambodia.
Indonesia Summer Alum Featured by the International Organization for Migration
Ahmed Badr joined our Indonesia- U.S. Youth Leadership Program in Bali and Yogyakarta last summer. See here for a recent profile by the IOM. Though just a few months shy of graduating from high school, he's working on a book that documents his childhood in Iraq, life in a refugee camp in Syria, and eventual move to the U.S. Ahmed will be attending Wesleyan University next fall.
TEDx Inya Lake in Myanmar
Last month's TEDx event in Yangon featured several VIA parters and alums. Lin Sun Oo and May Thway Ko are graduates of the Pre-Collegiate Program, which VIA alum Helen Waller now manages. VIA partner Yin Myo Su, founder of the Inle Heritage Foundation, also spoke.
Father of VIA Partner Tapped to Join Myanmar's New Cabinet
Inle Heritage Foundation founder Yin Myo Su's father will join the new cabinet as Minister of Hotels and Tourism. U Ohn Maung was a leader in the '88 democracy movement and was jailed for several years. He's well-known in Myanmar as a leader in sustainable tourism.
Cross-Program Collaboration: Another Step Toward Building a Stronger Eco-System!
As our alumni groups in Asia continue to grow, we are starting to see more cross-program collaboration. In Japan, alumni from our American Language & Culture (ALC), Exploring Social Innovation (ESI), and Design-Thinking for Social Innovation (DSI) programs came together in March where participants from the social innovation programs led a design-thinking workshop for the ALC students. Additionally, alumni from ALC and ESI at Macau University of Science & Technology held an event where they invited non-VIA students at their school to share their program experiences and to introduce concepts about empathy building and design-thinking that they learned on the program. Blog entries about these events can be accessed from the following links: Japan; Macau.
Sports for Social Change Alum Published in Slate
Sports for Social Change 2015 alum Patrick Cirenza writes in Slate about about theories of nuclear and cyber weapons and how mixing the two can be dangerous. Patrick graduated from Stanford in June 2015 and is now studying international relations at Oxford.
8 Apps Revolutionizing Maternal Health Care in Developing Nations
MayMay, the third app listed in the Mashable list, was one of the key projects that 2015-2016 fellow Perrie Briskin worked on during her VIA fellowship at PSI Myanmar.
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