VOA常速英语:100,000 Strong Grants To Latam

Increasing mutual understanding in the Western Hemisphere and building closer people-to-people ties will help the United States work together with other countries in the Americas to address common challenges including citizen security, economic opportunity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.

The 100,000 Strong in the Americas initiative, launched by President Obama in 2011, aims to foster region-wide prosperity through greater international exchange of students, our future leaders and innovators. The goal of the initiative is to reach 100,000 student exchanges each year in both directions between the United States and the countries of the Americas.

To achieve this ambitious objective, the United States is asking governments, the private sector, and academia to support this effort and invest in the future of the hemisphere. The Department of State recently announced it was awarding 100,000 Strong in the Americas grants to ten Latin American universities. This first round of competitively-awarded grants provides seed funding to strengthen universities’ ability to administer study abroad programs. The grants were awarded to universities in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama.

Each $25,000 award leverages commitments by the universities to increase study abroad to the United States and to receive students from the United States. These grants are one component of efforts by the U.S. Department of State and the initiative’s two key partner organizations, NAFSA: Association of International Educators and Partners of the Americas, to help educational institutions in the United States and across the Americas develop expanded study abroad opportunities.

Through this partnership, the three organizations are working together to offer partnership grants to support higher education institutions’ efforts to facilitate student mobility as well as training workshops to help U.S. and foreign universities build their study abroad capacity.

100,000 Strong in the Americas seeks to enhance the competitiveness of the hemisphere and the prosperity that it can generate by opening new doors of opportunity to thousands of additional young people across the region.

The United States will continue to work with its partners in the Americas, including the private sector, to increase the number of U.S. students studying in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada to 100,000, and the number of students from countries in the Americas studying in the United States to 100,000.