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WORLD-RENOWNED Yale University has selected Shaikha Marwa bint Rashid Al Khalifa of the Court of the Crown Prince of Bahrain as a 2008 Yale World Fellow.
Shaikha Marwa spearheads youth leadership programmes that aim to equip young Bahrainis with education and training for their progressively diverse economy.
She has devoted herself to the causes of children and young people and helps bridge the private-public school divide among Bahraini students and works to prepare and guide prospective college students toward fields that suit their academic credentials, while tying their educational potential to the country's strategic development goals.
"It is a remarkable honour to have been selected to the Yale World Fellows Programme," said Shaikha Marwa. "I am looking forward to the multi-disciplinary challenge of the programme and believe my work will benefit enormously from it."
Joining her this year are a senior advisor to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a groundbreaking Chinese public interest lawyer, a Zimbabwean epidemiologist working to develop methods for prevention of HIV infection in women, and the founding Secretary General of Nicaragua's Ministry of Defence.
Selected from outside the US at an early mid-career point, 'World Fellows' come from a range of fields, including government, business, media, NGOs, the military and the arts.
The Yale World Fellows Programme aims to build a global network of emerging leaders and to broaden international understanding. It conducts a worldwide competition each year to select 18 highly accomplished men and women from diverse fields and countries for a four-month leadership programme at Yale.
Yale president Richard C Levin said: "I am delighted to welcome this extraordinary group of men and women to the Yale community. Yale will benefit greatly from their presence on campus, and we anticipate that the Fellows will gain new perspectives on their own roles as future leaders."
Yale World Fellows Programme director Michael Cappello, added: "The 2008 Yale World Fellows, while diverse in background, share both an outstanding record of accomplishment and unlimited potential for future success."
The programme selection process is intense: the 18 World Fellows for 2008 were selected from a pool of nearly 1,100 applicants from around the world.
Since its inception in 2002, 125 World Fellows from 69 countries have been welcomed to New Haven for this programme.
From August to December, the 2008 World Fellows will engage in a specially designed seminar taught by some of Yale's most eminent faculty, take any of the 3,000 courses offered at the university, participate in weekly dinners with distinguished guest speakers, receive individual skill-building training, and meet with leaders.
Nominations to the 2009 Yale World Fellows Programme are accepted online until December 31, 2008, at: www.yale.edu/worldfellows.
