All About World Fellowship!

This July I attended the DKG International Convention in Austin,TX.  It was an enlightening event, but I'll tell you more about that later.  Right now, here is what I found out at a workshop on the World Fellowship Program of DKG.
You can download the flyer DKG provides>

History:

• Scholarship Program for Non-DKG members outside the US and Canada
• Program initiated in 1946 and 4 German women studied for 8 weeks in Sweden in 1948
• 1952 World Fellowship formed an alliance with UNESCO
• 1958-1960 was the beginning of the present program, which requires that the recipient be pursuing a Masters or Doctorate in her chosen field and be a Fulbright scholar
• In 1960 the award was $2500
• 1972 World Fellowship became a Standing Committee of DKG
• Since 1960, $9.3 million in awards have been given to 963 women representing 122 countries.
• World Fellowship gets all of its funds from chapter, state, and individual donations.  No funding comes from the DKG budget
• We don’t get names for WF until October because the women chosen must first be accepted as Fulbright Scholars at a University in the US or Canada and then they must get to the program and begin their studies before we make the award!  Sometimes the women that we want to choose don’t make it to their programs for personal or financial or visa requirement reasons.

World Fellowship has entries on the DKG Blog – after sign-in http://dkgsi.blogspot.com/search/label/World%20Fellowship%20Committee
You can read the stories of some of these remarkable women.
The recipients are found at dkg.org ->Tools -> Chapter Tools -> World Fellowship.

Sigrun Klara Hannesdottir, Ph.D, from Iceland was the next speaker.

• 1967 World Fellowship Scholar, studied at Wayne State University during 1987-68
• Received permission to remain in the US for a year to work in Michigan (usually the scholars must leace the US as soon as their program is completed
• Joined the Peace Corps o work in Peru for the Bank of International Development.  While she was there and earthquake devastated the economy of Peru.
• In 1975 DKG came to Iceland and Sigrun was the initial contact person.
• She was Regional Director for Europe 2002-2004
• Received the European Achievement Award in 2009
• Received the DKG International Achievement Award in 2013
• She has been a professor of library science, the Director of NORDINFO and was the first woman to serve as national librarian.  Wayne State gave her the Distinguished Alumni award in 2009.
• In 2003 she received the Order of the Falcon for contributions to Library Science in Iceland.
• And more!

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