Fulbright News

International Education Week

Fulbright Educational Exchange Program Marks 60th Anniversary

In her statement on International Education Week 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called attention to the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright Program, describing it as the "flagship international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government."

"With a mandate to promote mutual understanding, the Fulbright Program exemplifies the power of international education," she said in the November 3 statement.

• Statement by Secretary Rice on International Education Week
• Education Secretary Says U.S. Students Need "Global Perspective"
• U.S. Schools Attracting Growing Number of Non-U.S. Students
• Sharp Hike Reported in Volunteering by U.S. University Students
• EJournal: College and University Education in the United States

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Guatemalan Businesswoman and Fulbright Alumni, María Pacheco, Visits the White House

First Lady Laura Bush, María Pacheco and 27 other female business leaders in a Fortune / U.S. State Department International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership program group photo at the White House. White House photo by Kimberlee Hewitt.

Washington, May 1, 2006

Guatemalan Businesswoman María Pacheco, along with 27 other female business leaders from around the globe, met with First Lady Mrs. Laura Bush at the White House on Monday, May 1, 2006 to kick off the Fortune/State Department International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership program. The mentoring program is a joint effort by the Department of State and Fortune Magazine designed to match top U.S. women executives with emerging women in businesses from around the world. Department of State Assistant Secretary in ECA, Dina Powell, announced this new project in November 2005 at the Fortune's Most Powerful Women Conference.  Ms. Pacheco and her colleagues will spend a month working directly with mentors in the U.S. to enhance their management and business skills a well as gain experience in the cutting edge U.S. business environment. As part of the mentoring program, Ms. Pacheco will have the opportunity to shadow a senior executive from the U.N. Foundation based in Washington D.C. and engage in activities specifically designed to help her expand her company's reach.

María Pacheco, a former Fulbright scholar who earned an M.Sc. in agriculture from Cornell, is a leader in Guatemala in developing economic opportunity for indigenous women. Through her vision over the past decade, she has been able to organize a variety of projects that unite enterprise with programs that empower poor, indigenous women by increasing through commercial and legal opportunities. María Pacheco not only links community groups with local and international markets, but is also involved in projects at the national level. She is one of the GOG Planning Secretariat advisors for an Inter-American Development Bank funded program for rural development to create productive chains with community groups that will increase income to impoverished population, employment and sales.

Currently she is the founder and director of Kiej de los Bosques--a private company that was founded in 2004. The first project was born in 1993, when a small group of native farmers of Sacala Las Lomas, Guatemala, struggled to feed their families, and María, newly back from her Fulbright, developed a means to do so while recovering the ecosystem. Together they created a system of rural development that is now a model of sustainable development and economic growth. It consists of articulating productive chains, with the following elements: (1) using local knowledge and abilities, (2) recovering the value of native plants, and planting them, and (3) making alliances from the village to the rest of the world.

Ms. Pacheco developed a marketing mechanism that allowed indigenous women to create textile "aprons" that surround the bottles of Guatemala’s most prestigious rum, Ron Zacapa. The bottling company now employs the textiles of the women’s company that she developed that employs scores of poor families and is a mark of adept entrepreneurship.