Austin Walker ’12 has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to Kenya. He will spend the 2012-13 academic year working on his project “Kenyan Youth Development: Youth as Kenya’s Development Architects” in Nyanza Province of western Kenya. Walker will rejoin the Lwala Community Alliance staff and director Robert Kasabala to build upon the baseline study about youth perspectives on development that they conducted last summer.
They will study the methods youth would use to address development within their communities and the strengths and weaknesses of empowering Kenyan youth to be the architects of their development. Walker is an interdisciplinary studies major focused on international development and social justice.
Walker studied abroad in Tanzania in 2011. In summer 2010 he received funding through the Joseph Anderson Fund, managed by the Career Center, to work at Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya. He received a Levitt Fellowship last summer to continue his research there under the guidance of Professor of Government Steve Orvis.
Walker was selected to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University conference held this spring at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He also presented his Levitt Center research at Hamilton and at the New York 6 Undergraduate Conference at Skidmore College.
At Hamilton Walker has been a member of the choir, a Days-Massolo Center ambassador, a residential life assistant and has worked in the mail room.
Upon his return from Kenya he plans to pursue an advanced degree in international studies specializing in East African youth development.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study abroad for one academic year. The purpose of the Fulbright Program is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills. The program is designed to give recent college graduates opportunities for personal development and international experience.
The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by Congress to the Department of State. The U.S. Student Program awards approximately 900 grants annually and currently operates in more than 140 countries worldwide.
Walker is the son of Joanna Fernald of Topsham, Maine, and Arthur Walker of Union, Maine. He is a graduate of White Mountain School.
Read about more Fellowship and Scholarship recipients.
