ABOUT YES ABROAD | whiteirises

I'm spending 10 months in Turkey studying in the Kennedy-Lugar YES Abroad program, sponsored by the State Department. One of the State Department's "answers to 9/11," the program was established by Congress in October of 2002. It began by providing scholarships to spend a year in the United States for students from countries with significant Muslim populations.

YES Abroad now sends 65 American students to Bosnia & Herzegovina, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, or Turkey each year. It has also sent students in past years to Egypt and Mali. The State Department covers all expenses, from flights to school supplies.

Interested in living a new culture? Learning a new language? For more information, click here. The application deadline is January 10, 2014.

WANT TO STUDY ABROAD FOR FREE?

Another State Department sponsored scholarship program is the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). It pays the entire way for you to study languages that are important for national security, specifically: Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Russian, or Turkish, in country. More info here.

I was accepted by both programs, and wholeheartedly recommend them. If you have any questions from a student's perspective, email me at eawoods42@gmail.com.

For students interested in learning German on scholarship, click here.