IVLP Alumni Spotlight: Two Women Countering Violent Extremism

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Ms. Natascha Jensen (second from right) from Denmark with fellow IVLP participants at the CVE conference she organized in Aarhus in November 2015.

 

IVLP Alumni Spotlight features U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) alumni as they reflect on the impact of the program and how it has affected their work and lives.  Here we feature two alumni who participated in a Multi-Regional project for women engaged in countering terrorism on practitioner and grassroots levels in their own countries. The participants spent two weeks in the United States examining the growing threat of terrorism and extremist organizations, the role of women within these organizations, the radicalization of women, and the tools and strategies that help counter this threat.

 

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Working Together in Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brasil

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Part of the mural painting crew in Vitória

Arriving It was hard to know what to expect. I had never been to Brasil, let alone South America. I was leaving the end of winter and arriving at the beginning of fall, as if time were working in reverse or speeding up and skipping seasons. As far as air travel goes, the flights (three of them) were all on time and remarkably stress free. In the blink of an eye, after falling asleep watching The Martian somewhere over the Amazon rainforest, I was in São Paulo, the biggest city in the Southern Hemisphere. I would be back later...

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Top 5 Tips for Best P3s

Posted under: Center for Global Leadership By /

Effective global leaders need to understand and cultivate public private partnerships for sustainable outcomes.

Public Private Partnership : a government service or private business venture that is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies. Whether in Washington or around the world, many are justifiably weary of the term. We hear it frequently. It is thrown around as a “catch all” term, but has no intrinsic value; it is simply a descriptor. The marker of a public private partnership is attached to all manner of initiatives from the electric grid to highways and job training. PPPs, as they are dubbed in the alphabet soup of Washington,...

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Mapping IVLP Volunteer Service

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IVLP Volunteer Participation in Fiscal Year 2015

The spirit of community service has grown stronger every year since Congress enacted the National and Community Service Act of 1990. From President Bush’s Points of Light Award to President Obama’s United We Serve initiative, successive presidents have helped to strengthen this part of the American cultural fabric. After Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designated as a national day of service in 1994, Americans everywhere worked to make it not a day off but a day on. Continue  

Program Theme Spotlight: Climate Change Adaptation

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A representative from the National Capital Planning Commission explains the function of the levee on the Capital Mall to an IVLP Climate Change group.

Program Theme Spotlight is intended to promote ideas, brainstorming and best practices on frequent IVLP project topics.

Climate change is one of President Obama’s top foreign policy and national security priorities. While world leaders continue to seek consensus on emissions reduction, the impacts of a changing climate are already being seen in regions and communities around the globe. Increasingly, International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) projects will reflect this reality. While projects on key related topics such as green energy and sustainable energy management will continue in importance, one topic will make its way to the forefront: adapting to the impacts of climate change.

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