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CONTACT: Laura Ingalls (laura.ingalls@worldlearning.org) in Washington, 1.202.646.6973
Tufts Student Receives First Rowan Swanson Fellowship
WASHINGTON (November 17, 2009) -- The lives of two remarkable young women will be celebrated Wednesday when SIT Study Abroad, a program of World Learning, awards the first Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship. World Learning President and CEO Adam Weinberg will formally present the award to Michelle Eilers, a senior at Tufts University studying anthropology and community health, during a ceremony at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“SIT Study Abroad is thrilled to award Michelle Eilers with the first Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship,” said Weinberg. “She embodies many of the exceptional qualities of the award’s namesake, including Alice’s passion for preserving the traditions and improving the daily lives of indigenous people living in Latin America.”
The fellowship will enable Eilers to study a program in Chile that provides indigenous Aymara women with access to their traditional birthing methods within a modern hospital. The project will expand on research that Eilers conducted earlier this year on an SIT Study Abroad program that focused on culture, development and social justice in Chile.
The family of Alice Rowan Swanson created the fellowship as a living tribute to Alice, an Amherst College graduate who died in a bicycle accident in July 2008 in Washington. Rowan Swanson was inspired to begin a career in international development and human rights following her SIT Study Abroad experience in Nicaragua in 2006.
In her last year at Amherst in 2007, Rowan Swanson applied for and received a grant that allowed her to return to Nicaragua to work with an elected council of community leaders in Monimbó, an indigenous neighborhood in the western city of Masaya. Following the project, she went on to intern with the Middle East Institute and work for the International Research and Exchanges Board in Washington.
The Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship is awarded twice a year to SIT Study Abroad alumni who would like to return to the country of their program to pursue development projects that benefit human rights.
To learn more about the fellowship, SIT Study Abroad and World Learning, read:
Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship
Learn more about World Learning:
The Experiment in International Living
SIT Study Abroad
SIT Graduate Institute
International Development Programs
World Learning works globally to enhance the capacity and commitment of individuals, institutions, and communities to create a more peaceful and just world through education, training and exchange programs.
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