Update: 12:05PM A PACIFIC Island youth has been selected by the prestigious US Fulbright Foreign Student Program for a scholarship, the first from this region in over a decade.
Siale Bain-Vete, the son of prominent human rights activist Atu Emberson-Bain and Steve Vete, was chosen after a competitive process.
"I am both thrilled and thankful for the opportunity to be a Pacific Fulbright scholar," he said in a press statement issued by the United States Embassy yesterday.
"This is a great challenge and I am also excited about being in the US at this particular time in history with President Obama in the White House."
The 27-year-old Tongan national will undertake a Masters in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York.
Maxwell is a top-ranked American graduate school for public policy.
"Upon completion of the Fulbright, I intend to return to the Pacific to continue working in the area of social development," he shared.
"I am confident that I will be in a stronger position to make a more effective and meaningful contribution to development in Tonga, Fiji and the region."
Bain-Vete worked for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the UN and international financing institution, for the past three years.
"IFAD's work programme is focused on developing innovative ways to help vulnerable groups living in isolated rural communities to overcome their hardship and poverty," he said.
"This experience has put me in touch with remote and marginalised communities in the Pacific. It is why I now have a special interest in pro-poor development policy, building local participatory processes, and facilitating advocacy by these communities."
