The Mutual Empowerment of Virtual Exchange

The Stevens Initiative is an international effort to build global ties between young people in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa.

Funded by the U.S. State Department, the Stevens Initiative awards grants to nonprofits and higher education institutions worldwide to implement international and collaborative learning through virtual exchange.

The initiative serves as a living legacy to the work of U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, who lost his life in the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012. It is inspired by the meaningful international exchange experiences that the Ambassador had as a young man, which helped to shape the kind of diplomat he became.

The video below is an introduction to The Stevens Initiative and the impact of its programs.

"It's action-based learning, it's team-based learning," shares Amy Gillett, Vice President of Education at the William Davidson Institute, one of the institutions participating in the virtual exchange programs. "It's everything that we want to be doing to educate students for the 21st century."

The original video can be found on the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs' YouTube channel here.