The East-West Center’s Pacific Islands Development Program welcomes participants from Pacific Island nations for two new leadership programs. The Pacific Island Leadership with Taiwan (PILP) aims to enhance individual leadership skills and development of regional expertise and a people-to-people network in the Asia-Pacific region. The program intends to help develop human resources in the Pacific Island nations that will contribute to the development of their home countries and strengthen relations with Taiwan. Each year, up to 25 early to mid-career professionals will be selected from Pacific Island nations to participate in this fellowship. The 13-week program begins in August with 8 weeks of intensive cohort learning at the East-West Center’s campus, followed by a month-long field study in Taiwan. The program will place emphasis on law of the sea, community-based resource management, geopolitics, climate change, alternative energy development, small business development, cultural diversity, and telecommunications.

The Pacific Islands Women in Leadership Program is a three-week intensive residential program, starting in October, followed by a year of network peer support to effect positive regional change on gender issues by empowered young women leaders through specific projects. The program is aimed at women in their early thirties from a cross-section of Pacific Island communities and diverse sectors. Participants will be paired with mentors in Hawaiʻi and elsewhere who can provide empathetic, knowledgeable sounding boards to develop strategies and approaches that are applicable to the participants’ situations back home. Two main objectives are (1) the development of a network of women leaders working on Pacific women’s empowerment issues and connected to supportive institutions, and (2) development of applied leadership projects designed within and for specific communities. The program draws elements from the East-West Center’s decade-long “Changing Faces Program” (a leadership program for Asia-Pacific women) to address issues and challenges for Pacific women in educational and health care access, domestic violence, and marginalization from social and economic and political power.

For more information, visit http://www.eastwestcenter.org/