Mountain View Medical Group Scholarship: Fill & Download for Free

Background:Back in 2009, a group of American entrepreneurs were put together by a social media activist named Jared Cohen. The group included Jack Dorsey (business person) of Twitter (and later Square) and Hunter Walk of Youtube and Second Life. They went on a trip to Iraq and decided to host a few Iraqi tech entrepreneurs in the US. A year later, the "Iraq IT Interns" program was born! For more information about that trip, read this: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-08/ff_iraq (more on this below).First Iteration:In January 2010, six young men ranging from 22 to 35 were selected out of a few hundreds. They were taken to the bay area and St. Louis where they interned at Blue State Digital, Howcast, and AT&T (company) for three months and returned to Iraq on April 29th 2010, which is when I and my group met them at the US Embassy in Baghdad along with the US Ambassador and a few government officials. They spoke of how much they liked it and recommended the program to everyone they knew on Facebook. It's worth mentioning that neither Twitter nor Square offered any internships for the first group.Second Iteration:While the first group was in the US, the NGO (AED) behind the "Iraq IT Interns" was working on the second iteration of the program. They published a simple website and Facebook page and tried to promote the program to as many people as possible, all while trying to get other tech companies/startups onboard with the program. They managed to sign up Engine Yard, Square, and Mozilla. They also had Google and Rapleaf, but both backed out later.How I Found out:During that time, I was a Computer Science student in my senior year at the University of Babylon. I was just a month away from graduation and one day I was talking to a few friends in the CS department building when a friend of mine came to me asking for help translating something a professor has given her. It was a print out of http://iraqtech.aed.org. I took one look at that piece of paper and my eyes lit up! She didn't end up applying, but I did!A few thousand applicants applied for the program, of which they selected 32 candidates. I was one of them, I was heading towards finals and but I set out to take each step at a time and not to think about it much. They interviewed each of us on Skype, then narrowed the number down to 17, then to 14.I was humbled to be a part of this amazingly talented group which even included a young CS professor from my department! AED finally announced that from that point on, the companies are going to select the candidates they liked most out of the remaining people.The Season Finale:On April 25th, all 14 candidates went through a visa interview at the US Embassy in Baghdad, and then on the 29th, we met the first group and had lunch with them at the Embassy. Then on May 14th, just out of the blue, I was contacted by the program supervisor and let know that Square has decided to select me without even requiring an interview. I was very glad to be out of the danger zone, though still a bit disappointed because I really wanted to go with Mozilla, not knowing at the time that I was by far the luckiest! Others were selected by Mozilla, AT&T, and Engine Yard. The final group included (with ages at the time, and companies):1. Amaar Jafar (28) - Mozilla.2. Aram Mustafa, (24) - Engine Yard.3. Hayder Wathik (29) - Mozilla.4. Ibraheem Abdul Mutalib (29) - AT&T.5. Mahmood Al-Gburi (25) - AT&T.6. Mustafa Sersoh (24) - Square.7. Wael Al-Sallami (22) - Square.Life in the Bay Area:On May 26th 2011, we flew to San Francisco. We all lived in Berkeley's International House briefly, then after a week-long orientation program, the Mozilla guys were moved to Mountain View and the AT&T guys were moved to San Ramon, while I, Mustafa, and Aram stayed in the I-House for the duration of the program.We were all given shiny new MacBooks (I'm typing on mine!) and left to live in pairs without any supervision of any sort, which I think helped a lot with us getting a real experience. Each week, everyone gathered at the I-House to attend classes at the Center of Technology and Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley, and then towards the end of the program, the program organized private tours in Facebook, Google, and Apple! We also made road trips to Lake Tahoo, LA/Hollywood, and Santa Cruze on our own! We had lots of fun :)Happy Ending:We returned to Iraq on August 16th, I took my finals which I postponed before my departure (Medical leave, don't ask!), graduated, and started working remotely as a Rails developer for Stylitics after Ken Singer (my mentor at UC Berkeley) introduced me to one of the company's founders. I've kept tabs with the tech community in the Silicon Valley and my friends at Square ever since.Interestingly enough, I had been a follower of Hunter Walk on twitter for quite some time now but I didn't know that he was a part of that trip, but on Sept 7th 2011, he tweeted this (below) and I couldn't help but reply to thank him for what he did! Small world, eh?http://twitter.com/#!/wa3l/status/111550529041219584I'm returning to the US soon thanks to a fully-funded scholarship from IIE.I hope that that answers your question :)Related: http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2010/August/20100823104041kcsniggih0.682934.html?CP.rss=trueHere are some photos:Wael Al-Sallami, Jack Dorsey, Mustafa Sersoh. At the Square office.Top row: Aram, Ammar, Wael, Hayder. Bottom row: Mahmood, Mustafa Sersoh, Ibraheem. At Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. That ball is made up of the name tags of all the visitors who ever visited Facebook's HQ!Aram, Hayder, Wael, Mahmood, Mustafa, Ibraheem, Ammar. Just outside the Google HQ in Mountain View.Times Square, NYC. Just before our departure back to Iraq.

I can speak from the point of view of a very poor student (<4k/year declared income for 4 people family: father, two kids and disabled uncle) in the second best university of my country (I just could not afford the rent/cost of life in the city of the top one, and the foreign universities i got accepted in had no scholarship offer for me)Before starting high school one of my teachers suggested me to stop studying and do professional training because my family needed my help.High school was a big deal for the fact that most of the professor would again suggest me to drop out and go to work to help my family and take night classes.This got annoying to the point where they would talk about it every single time i got a bad grade...I eventually developed the idea that "grown ups" were always wrong, since the message to the class was "education first", but “drop out and quit school” to me.Meanwhile I found a way to make some money with my computer, not much but at the time my father's income was about -20 000€ more debt every yearso, since grown ups were wrong and stupid i just wanted to live alone with my grandparents and push my father away from my life.These problems made me hate the school system and so just started to abuse the school's resources, some of the "good" abuses were print books and publications to read in humanities classes (which i wasn't really following anyway) but as soon as they found out, someone had the school principal BAN ME FROM THE COMPUTER LABS unless i had a professor looking at my monitor, so i just left a backdoor in the professor's computer and asked some friends to take the prints.Eventually the lab assistant understood something was going on and took me to the principal again, but since he could not prove anything and i played dumb they just told me to be a good student and follow classes.My idea that adults were just plain retarded got stronger with the events, they get angry at me for wanting to study very important things (comp science), an ignoring useless subjects (religion and poetry).And of course i was so stupid to skip the first 3 hours of classes every day to get back at them (it looked a badass move back then now.. not so much), my father was too busy with financial problems to care about us, and my mother died when i was 7 so no one even answered the school's inquiries about it.The relation with my classmates was a social hell, I was smelling, my clothes were broken and my teeth would have described as a graveyard by the first dentist i would meet a few years later.Since i had to sit near someone I took the place near the "retarded kid", I would avoid opening my mouth if not to say yes/no/fuckyou (including to professors)I graduated (two years later) with 1% more than the lowest score but luckily i got a referral letter from a professor of the best university in my country since i worked with him in a company of his and managed to impress him with my work on computer vision (not so much of a feat but it took a lot of work considering my age).leaving high school for university was the best thing happened to meno one would have told me to drop out so i could help my familyno one knew me and i could just reset everything by changing group of friendsi didn't have to take my bike for 1.30 hours every day regardless of weatheras long as i would study the scholarship would pay for my needsi had just left my girlfriend so there would have been a lot of fucking (like in the movies no?!)The first year was good, for the first time in my life i had some money and my relatives promised to give me 500€ for my school year, up to that moment the most i had was 100€, so i took my unlimited money and went to buy clothes!new clothes! and i still had money for gym! things went well for a few monthsI only had to change friends once and except for the free fucking (movies lied!) everything was so goodPlus I was allowed to print as much as i wanted and of course i wanted! i was reading so much about everything (biographies, social relations books, and of course computer vision and machine learning), spending my day in a perfect division of study, 1/3 classes 1/3 social relations 1/3 books.then the year finished and we were waiting for the scholarship money which was about 5000$, but we never got the money, the economical crisis got the blame and i was broke again, this is where i noticed the difference between me and the middle-rich guys, i was going out of money and this year i would have to pay the rent (those 4000$ would have done it, first year we get free housing) so i had to take up a job and of course a web startup was perfect for me, I didn't ask them much, 350€/mo and the ability to change my schedule to accommodate lessons and exams, the first month went well but starting from the second they started asking me to double my work hours since things didn't go well (i would not get paid double) i could not say anything, if i quit i can't pay the rent, i stay and i fuck up my balance.While my ex friends were "studying" and partying i was working and studying at night, that year i lost my scholarship and got fired from the startup (!!) because they had to cut on people, i felt betrayed as i gave them all my time and they started to cut from me meanwhile my middle class friends were going to parties in occupied residences to "protest against the government" and calling me stupid because i was working to get the money i needed while letting "the government" cut on our future, that was the moment when i started to hate middle class people, hypocrisy at it's highest, they were surprised when i would tell them i spent the summer working and didn't go on some island to spend my holidays.The richer ones were different instead, i spent my summers working with medics and high class people doing charitable work, while getting on top of a mountain by bike to see someone get off his b&w or some other expensive car which i could not even name is pretty frustrating, but on the job i was no different, i started to see patterns in life, very low class people are pretty similar to high class, both are focused on adding value (low class does it out of survival instinct and high class out of culture/instruction) while middle class is on average a little more short sighted.Right now we are all on the same boat, rich and poor, the exams are hard and there is little time to study (Comp Engineering), so the only difference is not noticeable inside the university, a few days ago a father of a "friend" offered a dinner to 50 people (averaging 70$ each), i was shocked but you learn to cope with it.There are a few things missing, like health problems and war in the family butit's a long post alreadyPoverty Impedes Cognitive Functionthis article is very relevant but it's missing out on the need for survival, when you are poor it's success or die.Keep in mind that my opinion has been strongly influenced by the environment i'm in.UPDATE:I graduated two years later than nominal time, got a job in another (serious) startup, quit the job to finish university, got admitted to the best uni to continue my academic career.Couldn’t enroll because the cost of life, ended up in the second best uni (again!) in the field with full scholarship, I’m older than 90% of my peers but having worked in the field and having such a strong resolve made me much more confident and kind, a good 30% of what i wrote in the answer faded away over time.I’m pretty happy but more importantly I find that I can transfer my confidence to people near me.

Philippines here.The demographics, culture and social structure are not the same in Philippines when compared to the more developed countries such as the US or parts of Western Europe, so there is no exact equivalence.I want to make it clear that there is a distinction between simply being poor vs lowlife, specially in the Philippine context. There is a significant number of people in the Philippines who are in poverty, yet they do not all behave like “trailer trash”. Many can be simple minded yet they are still dignified, humble, generous and gracious. Many are even well educated.The closest term I could think of is: Jologs (dyolog).Meet the Jologs.“Jolog” is a Filipino pejorative that is used to describe a gaudy person who belongs to the lower class (by the snobby people). Jologs are viewed as shabby and cheap, no sophistication and sometimes, not highly educated (or perhaps went to public school). They have the reputation of being loud, too flashy, uncultured and ostentatious.I find that they are mostly harmless, and some could actually be funny, flamboyant, vivacious and funny. There are also those who are foul mouthed and ill mannered, but thankfully, I have not encountered many of those. Generally, jologs do not have a general reputation of being violent or drug addicts. (The criminals and drug addicts are a different breed and are not automatically lumped with the jologs or the poor. Although logically, crime rate is higher in the poorer areas)What sets Jologs apart is their own distinct lingo (I don’t even understand some of their words). Many can communicate or get by in English but they may have poor command of the language. They also have their own unique subculture.Physically, you can probably distinguish them from the upper classes thru their attire, built, complexion and facial features. Lack of access to decent healthcare and balanced nutrition as well as stress from finances & daily life (most may not have a car and work in more labor intensive work) can manifest in their over all appearance, specially in late adulthood.They seem to be often wearing shorts, shirts or sleeveless or topless and flip flops as footwear. There are a number who like hanging outside (in open air) instead of indoors, and even remove their tops because it is too hot (and it is likely that they have no air conditioning- it can get ferociously hot and humid in the summer).I am not sure of the origin of the word “jologs”. Some say it comes from combination of the words dried salted fish (“daing & tuyo”) and eggs (“itlog”), because these are cheap food accessible to the masses. Others say it comes from the name “Jolina”, a popular actress who used to portray some tacky roles in the movies.There are different versions of jologs, they can live in different regions; their lifestyles & mindset are also diverse. Their housing can vary across the country.Probinsyano or Syano - this is a derogatory term used to describe an ignorant country bumpkin, hillbilly or redneck. They appear as not fashionable nor sophisticated, not cultured nor well travelled and are unrefined. (To be clear: A person living in a rural area is not automatically a redneck or hillbilly). The jolog kind may have a more pronounced rural accent and some are rough around the edges. You can spot them easily from afar and I could recognize them from the way they talk, move or walk. However, mind you, despite lack of wealth and sophistication, many poor jolog people in the countryside are quite decent, respectful, religious and even work hard to get education. In general, (due to culture) the children are raised by parents to excel in school, work hard and/or to be ambitious. Many of these types eventually become successful professionals, self made wealthy businepeople and/or street smart go getters- they are the ones who eventually leave for the city or go to another country for better opportunities. Many do succeed in climbing out of poverty. (I met someone who grew up poor from the province and she is now a SVP in Wall Street,NY. I know of many who used to be poor but who are now successful professionals all over the world, from Sydney, to LA/NY, to London etc. I personally know many who have improved their economic situation thru sheer hard work and perseverance. They have the expression “you need to study and work hard, burn the midnight oil and sweat blood if you have to” and “hunger will not kill you - so you have to keep fighting”). There are ofcourse also a significant number who are the opposite - they are the ones who stay behind, do not work & just bum around, hangout in the village and gossip in the neighborhood or the men drink with their buddies all day (then rely on handouts from other more successful relatives). They have no aspirations in life except perhaps mastering a karaoke song, learning the latest dance craze, memorizing some lines in the latest soap opera (telenovela), or eating a cup of instant noodle.Example of poor houses in the remote countryside below. These are huts or small houses.Some photos of life in the poor rural areas:The way people view the countryside has evolved and improved in the past years/decade. Many foreign expats, returning OFWs and established locals now like going to these areas to travel, live or retire because the air is fresh, there is no traffic, the pace of life is relaxed and it can even be closer to the beach.Squatters - this is the urban poor living in the slums of the city. They are called squatters because they squat illegally on public or private land and then unlawfully erect their shanty homes on that land.Here are some photos:A number of them come from the countryside, travelled to the city to find a survival job. Many of them have been trapped in this life of poverty for generations. Some eventually go back to the countryside (if they have land, at least they could eat and have a more decent life), but some prefer to stay in the slums than go back to the countryside for survival because they could earn more in the city and afford to buy food (if they have no land or property in the countryside, they would literally die of hunger; so at least in the city, they could afford to eat even by begging or doing all sorts of labor work (eg. Maid, gardener, etc) or other non formal sources of income (eg. Selling in the streets, doing laundry, factory work, construction work etc).I want to emphasize that not everyone living in “squatters” area are vulgar nor criminals. (The current mayor of Manila grew up in one of these slums but he worked hard and educated himself, went to law school & business school and eventually also studied in Harvard. He is one of the most respected government officials in the country now). I have visited several slum areas during my schooling and early adulthood, as part of various community and volunteer outreach work, and frankly, I have not encountered anybody dangerous nor threatening in any of my visits. In fact, I have seen many kids who are smiling, laughing and playing, teenagers playing basketball, and adults singing or drinking in the streets. It is my impression that they try to survive and live for the day and be merry for the day.There are however moments that you also see the face of despair, helplessness or grief. It is heartbreaking.There are many decent people who live in slums, but they simply could not afford better living conditions (so they sacrifice staying there until they could afford to move elsewhere. Otherwise, in most cases, they just accept their current realties. There could be many honest and good people living there while working normal honourable jobs like security guards, maids, cashiers, drivers, regular civil servants, policemen, receptionists, cooks, waiters and other private employees etc. Sadly, there is a big inequality of wealth in the country so if you are not a highly paid professional, celebrity, business owner, high level executive or government official etc, or if you don’t have rich parents, it could be impossible or very difficult to make ends meet and buy a nice house in a great neighborhood. It is not unusual that people in upper middle class or the wealthy, have their houses bought for them by their parents (or with their parents’ help). There is a big gap in the life between the classes (the “haves” and the “have-nots”).Some photos of houses of the luckier ones.3. The “natives” or “tribespeople” or “mountain people”. There are various terms used depending on the name of the tribe. The tribe name are used historically by some in a derogatory sense, implying that they are backward and primitive people. There are dozens of different kinds of tribes in the Philippines. Historically, these tribes were driven away and forced to move up the mountains by later settlers who lived in the plains; and they even moved further in more isolated in the mountains when the country was colonized by the western settlers. Many did not integrate with society and live independently in the mountains or isolated areas for generations. They may be viewed similar to how the natives in Canada. They have their own dialects, clothing, food and subculture. But I wish to erase this prejudice. My experience with a couple of tribes I had encounters with is they are mostly simple and unique but kind and genuine. I did not observe any obnoxious, violent or appalling behaviour. I used to participate in medical missions and community outreach to help deliver healthcare/dental care services, free legal aid and food (specially after a catastrophe (typhoon, volcano eruption etc). I am not sure if perhaps their situation has been improving in the past years/decades. I have also had the chance to encounter many very impressive and intelligent people who originated from these various tribes. You see, when there is a gifted or smart kid in certain tribes, not only the parents but their entire community help support or cheer on for that kid. I recall that I had a schoolmate in law school from one of these tribes. He was quite special. He graduated valedictorian from primary school to HS, summa cum Laude in university and then magna cum laude in law school (his community pitched in to help finance his schooling in the city, and he also got scholarships). He then topped the bar exams. I can tell you this is not an isolated instance that I get the chance to meet people from these indigenous groups or from remote mountain regions of Philippines who are quite exceptional. (could it be the fresh air they breathe or fresh food they eat or genetics? I don’t know). Recently, there is one I read who made it in the top 5 of the bar exams in London, UK. I also had another classmate in law school who was from a Muslim indigenous tribe in Southern Philippines, also an exceptional woman, she now occupies a high level position in the government.Some photos of tribewomen:There are different faces of poverty in the Philippines. But amidst the poverty and suffering, many still manage to smile, be happy, appreciate the present and be hopeful of their future. They cry and grieve in moments of despair but they manage to smile again and fight the war against poverty for another day. They are quite resilient. (There are a bunch who do resort to drugs and crime; I wouldn’t say that this is the majority of the poor).There are quite a number of them who eventually succeed in escaping poverty. You will be surprised that some of these poor people have produced the hardworking caregivers, nurses and doctors who are patiently caring for you.It seems like a paradox, that Philippines has a high incidence of poverty, yet many still look happy. I have seen more smiling faces there in the streets and the slums than I have seen in other developed countries. A Belgium photographer visited several slums in the Philippines and captured these photos: The smiling children of Manila slums who are overcoming povertyGrowing up, I didn’t hear people talk about “depression”. (Could it be the sun? The culture? Strong faith? A psychological survival mechanism? I don’t know. Perhaps all of the above). Here are more photos:Why are Filipinos too poor and yet too happy?Philippines among the happiest, most optimistic countries in the world — reportIn my opinion and experience, the worst poverty is not the poverty of material things but poverty of the soul and mind.