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Welcome To Princeton in Asia |
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 Mission Statement: “ To promote good will and understanding and to facilitate in every way the free interchange of the best ideals in the civilizations of both East and West.”
Princeton-in-Asia (PiA) provides transformative, service-oriented experiences for talented graduates and serves the needs of Asia as determined by our Asian partners. Over the last century, the organization has achieved this goal by providing talented young people with various opportunities to live and work in Asia. The first PiA "fellowships" consisted of a handful of Princeton University graduates who went to China in the late 1890s to do relief work and teach English; the program has since expanded considerably in size and scope throughout Asia. In 2007, PiA placed 125 fellows in seventeen countries, including Cambodia, China, Timor-Leste, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Currently the program offers 85 teaching fellowships with 40 additional fellowships in the fields of journalism, international development, and business.
PiA's Home Office is located on the Princeton University campus. Princeton-in-Asia is a private, independent, non-profit organization 501(c)(3) affiliated with Princeton University.
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Beth Morrissey: PiA Fellow of the Fortnight |
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 Despite the
warnings at PiA orientation not to spend too much time
on the internet, Beth finds herself updating Twitter and Facebook every
day. She can't help it; its part of her job. She's working with the
ABS-CBN News team to integrate new media and citizen journalism into
their coverage of the upcoming presidential elections. The goal is to
equip every voter with the means to report election-related fraud and
corruption to the media via email, social networking sites, and text
messages. But new media Pinoy-style extends well beyond the virtual
realm, and Beth is learning how Filipinos turn online socializing into
warm-bodied rallies. Election time is still months away, but the
citizen journalism movement is taking off, which means Beth might just
be a small part of what could turn
into a game-changing movement when ballots are cast in May 2010.
When she isn't sewing the seeds of citizen journalism, Beth is
filing stories for ABS-CBN's ANC News Channel. So far she's covered a
barista competition, a theatre opening, and an installation art exhibit
that used computers to grow plants.
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Stacia Birdsall: PiA Alum of the Fortnight |
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 I spent a fabulous year in 2002 as a PiA Fellow at Save the Children's Himalayan Field Office in Kathmandu writing grants, collecting and analysing maternal health data, and learning jokes from a group of staff women who called themselves "the Haha's" because they laughed so much. A highlight of the year was a month in Bhutan, where I researched adolescent reproductive health, put together an extracurricular program for schools in Zhemgang District, and danced to Hindi and Chinese pop at All Star nightclub in Thimphu. In 2003 I came back to the US to do a master's in nursing at Yale and become a midwife. During my final year of school I went to Pakistan to do relief work after the Kashmir quake (little blurb from the PAW) and quickly picked up essential Urdu for shopping, eating, and delivering babies.
Following graduation I traveled through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia (where I snacked on fried insects for the first time), and Vietnam, topped off with a jaunt back up to Kathmandu. Currently I'm working in an Ob/Gyn clinic in New Haven, and occasionally get the chance to bust out my rusty Nepali with a handful of Nepali patients here. I'm also still quite infected with the South Asia bug--I take my vacations in India, and after spending two weeks in Afghanistan last December, have decided to move to Kabul this January to work as a midwife trainer in a hospital there.
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