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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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Matthew Kuzio: PiA Fellow of the Fortnight |
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 Matthew marched forward
through the cold, polluted horizon - reminded by the haze that the
future of Ulaanbaatar remained uncertain. He understood his time there
coincided with drastic economic and social change throughout the whole
country. Granted, he had enjoyed the Louis Vuitton party for its fun
and decadence, but what were the implications of a luxury goods
retailer opening in a place where the average per capita income was
$260 a month - but then again the city was already mired in
contradiction of new and old, poor and rich.
As the feeling
left his toes, he began to make out the outlines of the XacBank sign
softly shimmering through the morning smog. ‘How perfect,’ he thought,
‘within the haze of uncertainty, he felt Xacbank had delicately etched
out a sustainable path for development through its microfinance
principles and relationships with the City Government, international
organizations and NGOs.’ Within this path, the bank’s Eco Products
initiative had taken off. He reflected that over the past six months,
he and the Eco Products team had successfully launched a new loan
product that provided poor households with low interest loans that
allowed them to switch to efficient heating products while leaving more
money each month that had previously been spent on fuel for health,
nutritional and family needs.
Through the program, the bank accessed
the carbon markets to pay for its costs and became the first MFI in the
Northern Hemisphere to receive a carbon credit. The UN took notice of
the program, and Matthew flew to Bangkok to present at the 1st session
of the Committee on Environment and Development. As he entered the building, he smiled, and then thought of the beautiful spring that awaited him on the open Mongolian steppe.
To continue the tale, please visit: www.microinmongolia.com
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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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