Oi and welcome to another Podcast episode of We the Fellows. This is Rabia Garib and the fellow that today's podcast features is someone very special to the group. The Eisenhower Fellowship program not only invites outstanding individuals to be part of the fellowship program, but also invites them to bring their spouses along. I am just surprised how accomplished these spouses turn out to be!!
I had the wonderful opportunity to get to know Keila Knobel the first day I landed in Philadelphia back in the middle of March. Keila and Marcelo are from Brazil and live in a city near San Paolo called Campinas. Keila is Marcelo's wife and I was so touched by their invitation to have lunch with them at the Marathon Grill. That's where I learned how wonderful a person Keila is, and how strong a bond Marcelo has with his wife.
Keila is an audiologist and a speech therapist and works with people who have problems with communication.
Keila's experience has taught me one very important lesson - it is only with exposure and meeting with people that you are able to correct the misconceptions that we develop. I wish Keila all the luck in the world and hope that her young son is enjoying her back home in Brazil.
Stay tuned for more podcasts
So
this morning when we were told that we’d be going to the Boston Globe
and then interacting with a group of Ethnic Media, the group of a few
of the fellows had a list of tough questions to ask. And if anyone
thought that we’d just sit and listen into what the groups had to say,
they were obviously going to encounter a different group.
Over
the course of the fellowship, the change in so many of us has been
visible. Whereas the first week of the fellowship was meant to be a lot
more of “watch and learn” by the time we reached the half way point of
the program we had shed our shells, and grown up – We wanted to learn,
be challenged and also to raise challenges and impress our experiences
and observations with our meetings.
The Boston Globe meeting, I would have to say, was interesting at best. You have to understand that the fellowship brings together people from foreign countries with diverse backgrounds and that gives us the opportunity to engage in dialogue to find out how we can bring greater benefit to our people who are in the US and those that are back home. And that always gives cause to the discussion of diversity to take center stage.
While the fact that the Boston Globe, like so many other newspapers, had decreased its circulation because of the competition that the internet was giving to them, I was shocked to know that over time, they had closed down their offices in foreign countries. What?! No foreign correspondence!? So where do they get their news and how diverse can a daily be that wishes to play its role as the responsible news delivery mechanism for its readers, wishing to provide both sides of a story?
While the Editor of the Boston Globe, Martin Baron, mentioned the phrase, “we are a diverse community in this country and in this State”, I have to question how that diversity is represented and ultimately, expressed through the paper. I questioned. I wasn’t convinced.
Except for the news items that are being picked up from let’s say Reuters, there doesn’t seem to be too much else going on. In fact, the copy of the Globe that Mandira ran to pick up, had one page dedicated to World News, of which 20% of the space would have been taken up by ads. I just found that sad.
I look at the amount of reporting that the US corporate media groups do on the world, and then am just not surprised that the average American is so shocked when he comes across one of us “diverse people”. I’m not saying that you should give up publishing content about America – of course not. But there are other ethnic groups out there. They are part of the American society that many of these publications report about, yet, they are not included as part of their stories.
Regardless, I’d like to thank Martin Baron, Editor of the Boston Globe for his time in arranging to meet with the Eisenhower Fellows.
As I make my journey through the weeks, I have met some extraordinary people making an extraordinary impact on their community through the platform that the fellowship provides. One such Individual is Timothy Cahill, State Treasurer and Receiver General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Boston. He has held elective office for 19 years at the local, county and state levels. As state treasurer and receiver general he currently serves as the chief financial officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as well as the state’s banker.
Tim’s fellowship is divided into 2 trips – India, where he just returned from and Ireland, where he will be going to in June of this year. Tim’s objectives are to learn how both Ireland and India have developed their economies over the past half-decade, and what policies they used to reverse migration into their urban areas and emigration from the country as a whole
I had the opportunity to have a rich conversation with Timothy during the orientation week of the fellowship and the diverse and complex range of topics that we discussed, will be things that I will hold onto for a long time.
The following sound byte is from Tim’s opening speech at the reception he hosted for us earlier this evening. Ladies and gentlemen? I present one of this year’s Eisenhower Fellows in the USA program – Timothy Cahill.
I think Timothy is a wonderful ambassador and I wish him well in all that he wishes to achieve for his state and his country. Like I keep saying, the fellowship is all about great representation and the bigger picture and with his hospitality and example, we have many exciting advancements to look forward from Tim. Stay tuned for more podcast episodes. Until then, this is Rabia Garib, Logging off!
After
spending almost 5 weeks with Keila Knoebel, wife of Dr Marcelo Knoebel,
I wave a tearful goodbye to her as she makes her way back home to be
with her son and family. I got a chance to get to know Keila my first
day in Philadelphia when Marcel, Keila and I made our way to St Peters
school to interact with the kids there. First days are always tough and
we managed to survive through the day by talking about things, trying
to get to know each other. The next day, the three of us had a
wonderful lunch and I learned the most wonderful things about this very
special couple.
Things like Keila made a pitstop to the post
office each day to send something out to her son - and how Keila would
insist on going back to the same restaurant and ordering the same
things because she had liked it so much the first time around..
Bug eyed as I was, I thought the 2-months of the fellowship would last forever. And yet today, at the Phoenix airport as I just hugged Keila, I found myself surprised at how quickly this time had passed by.
Keila? You are a wonderful person and have such a gentle soul inside of you. I wish you all the very best and pray that success finds you and your family wherever you are.
Oi!
But once my senses got the better of me, I realized the mammoth opportunity that was being offered to me. This was the opening into a world where I could mobilize and bring the maximum good to the people in my community back home in Pakistan. The fellowship arms me with opportunities and it is entire
a collection of experiences that my co-fellows at the Eisenhower Fellowship are going through. Experiences? Eisenhower?
You can find out more information from the eisenhowerfellowships.org website but here's the short version of what this 2-month fellowship is - It is the chance for people who have the ability and the vision to change the world as we know it - Twice a year, the eisenhower fellowships brings together anywhere from between 24 to 30 people from different countries, to help to establish links between their countries and the United States, in an attempt to increase communication, an exchange of views and business opportunities.
In the 3rd week of March, 24 of us travelled from around the world to meet in Philadelphia for the first time, to kick off our program.
During the initial interview process, When I was asked about the impact I thought I could make at the end of my 2-month duration, I remember I smiled and said, "The fellowship will never actually end. It will be a journey to meet with people from the US and from around the world, who I will be able to maintain links with for the rest of my life. Social or business, this journey is about networking and building contacts - That's exactly what I will go and do."
We have people representing countries as far away as Palestine and Saudi Arabia, as progressive as Turkey and Chile, as advanced as Ireland, Singapore and the Netherlands, and of course, as diverse as India and Pakistan - I will try and use the next several episodes of this podcast to give each of these fellows the chance to speak out to all of you, and let you get to better understand their objectives. I want to use these next few episodes to ask the various fellows what they think of specific issues and get their perspectives on international relations and global issues.
Despite what anyone says, the world is a really large place. But when you have ambassadors from around the world linking up to one another, it becomes really small, really fast.
Until the next podcast, this is Rabia Garib, logging off!
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Eisenhower Fellows Updated: Jun 1, 2007
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