NEWS & MORE

Congratulations to USEFP alumni Dr. Shamshad Akhtar and Professor Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi, on their appointments to positions in the caretaker government.

On Friday, May 4, 2018, Fulbright alumna Tayyaba Azeem, founder of SpeakUp!, organized a coaching session for Differently Abled Persons (DAP) with the support of USEFP at its Karachi premises. The session was attended by DAPs from different educational backgrounds and interests and facilitated by a fully-trained sign language interpreter from ConnectHear.

Over 150 Fulbright and Humphrey alumni travelled to Karachi, to celebrate 70 years of friendship between Pakistan and United States, as part of the 14th Annual Fulbright and Humphrey Conference, which took place between March 2 and March 4, 2018.

In an effort to foster a healthy exchange of ideas, encourage meaningful discussion, and influence change, USEFP organized PhD Alumni Forums, for Fulbright alumni who completed their PhD degrees in the United States. The forums were held in Islamabad as well as Karachi and were also attended by representatives from the U.S. Embassy and USEFP.

A pre-departure orientation (PDO) was held in Islamabad to celebrate the success of this year’s final candidates for the Fulbright Degree Program. The program is the American government’s flagship academic exchange program, and the program in Pakistan is one of the largest in the world thanks to contributions by both the American and Pakistani governments.

The following is a heartfelt post by Fulbright alumna, Amna Yameen, describing her experiences as a Pakistani, Muslim student in the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship. She returned in 2016 with a Master’s degree in Human Resource Development from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. She can be reached here. 

In developing societies like Pakistan, where innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit is slowly finding roots thanks to incubators like Plan 9, i2i, WeCreate, and spaces at top universities like LUMS and NUST, people are embracing a variety of problem solving techniques to help address local community problems. According to Fulbright alumnus, Ahsaan Rizvi, one way to identify opportunities for intervention, and to develop possible solutions, is to train young minds in design thinking, specifically, human centered design thinking – a creative approach to problem solving, which according to IDEO dot org, “starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs.”