*EPF208 11/23/2004
Developing-Country Professionals Share Cultures with Students
(Humphrey Fellows speak at Washington school about gender issues, societies) (1100)

By Julie Lippmann
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Fifteen Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows, accomplished mid-level professionals from developing countries, spoke about gender issues their countries face with an audience of inquisitive history students at a Washington-area high school.

Speaking November 17 at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Sibili Nsibande, a Humphrey Fellow from Swaziland, said she hopes the presentations, which compared the status of women in countries around the world, will "spark an interest" among the American students to increase their curiosity about life beyond their borders.

"[I]f they know that we are out there with the same problems that they have, maybe together we can come up with some global solutions," said Nsibande, who studies gender issues at Pennsylvania State University thanks to her Humphrey Fellowship grant from the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).

About 185 Humphrey Fellows representing 83 nations left their host universities to visit Washington for a November 15-19 seminar to commemorate International Education Week and to discuss the role of international education in shaping world leadership.

The fellowships provide professionals from abroad 10 months of study and professional experience in the United States. Fellows hail from designated countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe and Eurasia.

At the informal presentation at the Ellington school, sophomore and junior world history students heard 15 fellowship participants from Mongolia, Lebanon, Egypt, Swaziland, Burma and Côte d'Ivoire discuss gender roles and gender-related challenges the people of their countries face.

"I think they learned something from us, how different we are from Americans. How we view the world, [and] how we view each other," said Daw Myint, a Humphrey Fellow studying early childhood education at Pennsylvania State University and a program coordinator for Save the Children in Burma.

Myint said the Humphrey program has given her and her colleagues numerous opportunities to learn about American culture and society, to develop themselves professionally, to take academic courses and to share their cultures.

"We want to learn more about Americans and we want Americans to know more about our cultures, to create long-term relationships," she said. "Actually, I feel like it's part of our job to share our cultures to the American students [and] I really enjoyed sharing that kind of information with students, especially."

Nsibande, arts department head at an all-girls school, said that girls in Swaziland are a "challenged group" culturally.

When a woman gives birth to a baby girl, she explained, it is not a significant achievement; the woman is viewed as having failed in the marriage. However, if a woman has a baby boy, a goat is slaughtered and the family celebrates.

"[W]e are trying to change that outlook; that girls are just as important. We do not mean that we want to step down on the boys, no. But what we are saying is that we need to uplift some of those girls. We believe that if they are on an equal basis, they can do so much more to improve the economy [and] the social status of the community," said Nsibande.

When girls grow up, she said, they face challenges like teen pregnancy, unfavorable school-dropout rates because of pregnancy and HIV/AIDS, and the possibility of caring for their family if a parent dies of AIDS.

"I am here because of the girls. I want to go back home and make a difference. I want to go back home to inspire them, empower them," she said. "I am here to ask from others how they encourage their girls to finish school."

Jean-Marie Yebouet, a deputy headmaster with the Ministry of National Education in Côte d'Ivoire, said that his students face challenges in the form of teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and poverty, but also in the traditional roles of women.

"We are becoming more modern, organized, but the traditional society still exists in the rural areas. Girls for example, it's true, there is still that problem that some parents, for example, prefer not to send their girls to school, because for them, a girl is just good for marriage," Yebouet said.

However, progress is being made in the schools, he said. Technological knowledge is "moving very fast, especially for the younger generation," he said, and his school has a computer lab and students who study to be engineers in computer science.

Tsoodol Burmaa, the head of the English department at the State Pedagogical University of Mongolia and Zarifeh Jarjour, a chemistry and biology teacher at the Jounieh Official School with the Ministry of Education in Lebanon, said that women are on nearly equal footing in their countries.

Burmaa said that there was no big discrepancy between the numbers of men and women and their educational opportunities. Jarjour, who is studying teacher training at Pennsylvania State University, said that women are getting an education and enrolling in universities in higher and higher numbers.

Khalil Maged, professor of English at American University in Cairo, Egypt, said that family is also important in Egypt and that women are not segregated as adults. "We have women in every position you can imagine," he said. "We have women as taxi drivers, and we are lucky because they are sensible more than men. We are crazy in driving, to some extent," he smiled.

Maged and Jarjour both explained that family is a key concern for women in Egypt and Lebanon. Maged described the tradition of giving men double the inheritance of women, but outside of that, he said, all else is equal.

"Now we didn't have a woman prime minister or president. But I hope soon it will happen," he said.

The Humphrey Fellows also discussed the style of their governments, arts in their communities, and famous compatriots, from the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

After their presentations, students had an opportunity to ask questions of the scholars, and to see how the United States and the fellows' countries differed.

Principal Mitzi Yates lauded the program for its efficacy in exposing students to diverse ideas.

"I thought it was important for them to hear about the issues that were covered-- whether it was gender issues or drug issues [or] civil rights issues-- of what's going on in those countries, directly... . [T]he fact that this brought a diverse perspective, I thought it was wonderful," she said.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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