Education changes everything.
Just outside of my office at BancoFie is a poster that caught my eye on my first day of work as a Vittana Fellow. It says:“La Paz no es un obyecto encontrado por casualidad. Es el producto de la igualidad entre los hombres.” – -“Peace is not an object found [...]
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“Rainy season” in the Philippines is no joke. For about seven months a year, the Philippines is riddled with perpetual downpours and frequent typhoons. Since I have been in the Philippines there have been nearly twenty typhoons, most of them consisting of very heavy rains and mild flooding. My street [...]
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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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We’re floored on a daily basis by students who have struggled against all odds to finish their education, lenders who time and again come back to change yet another person’s life, and Fellows who dedicate a portion of their own lives to bringing microloans to more students in developing countries. [...]
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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 I sit here on the day before Thanksgiving, what comes to mind is the over 250 students on Vittana right now who are poised to transform their lives by continuing their education. Whether it’s Omar Ahmad‘s desire to become a civil engineer in Jordan or Lidia Severina Aban‘s goal [...]
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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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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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Here is a short compilation of graduates telling how Vittana loans changed their lives. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M63TTSbeocg[/youtube]
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For me, it was never really a question of whether or not I could go to college. Sure, money has always been tight in the Foster household and finding a way to pay for college for their four sons was never easy for my parents, but it wasn’t optional either. [...]
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