Coming Full Circle: Our First Horizons Graduates Become Volunteers
My first step into “work” was as a volunteer. After college, I joined the Peace Corps as an Environmental Education Volunteer in Kazakhstan. Having studied Russian in college, I was eager to see what I might contribute in this faraway place. How might I help local English teachers improve their language? How might I explain the environment to students at school? But what I accomplished was done as we, not I. My local counterpart, a Biology teacher, and I led an Ecology Club. A local English teacher and I led preschool English lessons and trainings for other teachers. A local coach and I coached (and played) in basketball tournaments around their country. The people I met taught me, and those I came to help certainly helped me more, allowing me to feel at home as a young person far from home, inviting me to meals and family events, teaching me their culture, their practices, their language.
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