Education changes everything.
College is a critical junction in the transition from child to adult. It’s a time when students learn to manage their own budgets and begin to understand what “cost of living” is all about. In Ghana, few students work during the school year. The job market is competitive, and much [...]
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The other day, I came across a what seemed like a strange clause in the policy for ASKI and Vittana’s pilot Loan for Educational Development Program (LEAP): Only third and fourth year students would qualify for a loan. I found myself wondering, what kind of impact are we making when [...]
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My time spent eating balut and riding in overcrowded tricycle taxis is coming to a close. After five months of being in the field I will return back to the United States of America and begin the next phase of my life. I pray that all the work we have [...]
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As a Vittana Fellow I find myself often comparing my educational experience and my life in the United States to what I see on the ground here in the Philippines. Although the Philippines is a far cry from Washington State there are still many similarities between my life there and [...]
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I must admit I knew very little about the Philippines before I arrived. What I did know was that it’s an archipelago in South East Asia and the only Christian nation in Asia. I knew basically nothing about what the people, politics, economy or food was like. It was a [...]
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I would like to begin this blog entry with one of my favorite quotes: “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told.” Well, it ‘hit’ me at a very young age… Since the moment I [...]
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Ithaca is a small town, home to around 30,000 people and Cornell University- which is situated on a hill above Cayuga Lake in Central New York. I spent the past four years studying Economics, Philosophy, and Psychology in this frigid island of academia far away from my home in sunny [...]
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Hot, humid, busy, loud and exciting are good words to describe my experience stepping off the plane at the airport in the Philippines. My destination, you ask? A tiny, rural province called Misamis Occidental on the island of Mindanao, the second largest island of the Philippines. Everywhere I looked, constant [...]
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Over the past few months three Vittana fellows, Charlie Gale, Kim Munn and Stefan Tangen, have been hard at work helping our three newest partners in the Philippines launch their student loan programs. Charlie, an academic exploring the theoretical components of international education, is currently enrolled in the Teachers College [...]
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“Loving a beautiful child is easy, it is loving a not-so-beautiful child that is hard.” – Shake Hands with the Devil, a movie about the genocide in Rwanda. Before departing for Rwanda, I made a point to learn about the country, especially its most recent history. When I arrived and [...]
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