Interested in international volunteerism?
Want to learn more about international development, and social entrepreneurship, and be a part of global problem solving ?

Want to take leadership of a student group that in the last two years has brought students from 25+ countries and 60 univerisities together with nonprofit leaders from more than 40 innovative global organizations, and helped 6 student global initiatives raise more than $30,000?

Work on the GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT 2008 (formerly IYVS)

Info Session THIS THURSDAY, April 19th
9:00pm - Armadillo Rm Norris

****Applications for new staff due by email at 5pm, Wed. April 25. Email to directors@iyvs.org****

Testimonials from past delegates and organizational reps:

“The passion and excitement from fellow delegates is amazing.”

“I feel more realistic and more idealistic at the same time.”

(From an Org Rep): “Too little of this critical reflection actually occurs in the development field, so its unique that these students are able to pursue this sort of meaningful dialogue early on in their own projects and careers”

“This is the first conference that has been responsible and critical about International Engagement while still being totally supportive.”

“Having a group of globally conscious college students and amazing facilitators and speakers together at the same time shows how powerful global engagement can be.”

Download Staff Application for Global Engagement Summit 2008

With just under two days to go in the GlobalGiving IYVS Project Challenge, the projects have now raised over $10,000!!!

Head over to the IYVS Project Challenge page and become a part of the REAL March Madness by investing in these incredible initiatives. As you know, the top two fundraisers from the competition, plus one additional project chosen by IYVS, will have the opportunity to reach additional donors as part of the GlobalGiving Project Network.

Hurry though: the Challenge ends March 21st!

IYVS participants and supporters: we have only a few days left to “vote with our dollars” in the GlobalGiving IYVS Project Challenge!

If you haven’t been over to the site yet, check it out at http://www.globalgiving.com/iyvs.html.  Thirteen awesome projects are competing, and the two projects that receive the most donations before March 21^st, plus one additional project elected by IYVS, will become part of the GlobalGiving Project Network.  This will give these projects an opportunity to access potential donors through the GlobalGiving website.

Of the thirteen projects participating in the IYVS Project Challenge, five are in Africa, five are in Latin America, one is in Asia, one is in North America, and one is a multi-regional initiative.  Topics include Public Health, Community Empowerment, Education, Microfinance, and Sustainable Technology.

So far OVER $6,000 HAS BEEN RAISED for these projects!  We would like to encourage all IYVS participants to become a part of this truly special opportunity by “voting” for your favorite project(s) with donations at the website.

Hurry, though: the competition will be over in 4 days (on March 21st)!

Last night, 75 of us–delegates, staff members, and facilitators–went to get Ethiopian food in Northern Chicago. We had great fun, and somehow, a man playing Casio keyboard renditions of “The Godfather Theme” and “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” enchanted us into dancing with more upbeat Bob Marley and Beatles numbers. This spiciness on our part was in equal parts aided by some nice food, nice drink, hormones flying back and forth, and one waiter in particular who kept getting in the circle and dancing with us (pictures will be posted, I’m sure). After a long couple of days of sharing techniques and concerns about our projects and hopes and fears for the world, we were able to share a sense of love, happiness, and excitement, out on the town. This was yet another unforgettable experience provided for me by my brothers and sisters at IYVS.

Good morning!

So far, Abroad View magazine, a nationally distributed student-produced publication that fosters global education and cross-cultural exchange, has had the pleasure of profiling 12 of you to learn about your project proposals and your perspectives on important global issues.

We’d love to hear from more of you! If you’re looking for a place to share your experiences from abroad, we encourage you to submit to our magazine. We’ll take anything: photos, artwork, poetry, articles, reviews, etc.! We are currently hosting a Student Writing Contest (deadline: April 2), and we accept submissions year-round for our Spring and Fall issues.

Getting published in Abroad View is a great way to inform other like-minded students and recent graduates about your passions and goals, and hopefully, inspire others to travel overseas and ENGAGE!

We thank the entire IYVS team for allowing us to participate in this blog. We hope Abroad View can serve as a forum to voice your concerns and stimulate your curiosities.

Thank you, and enjoy your last day of the conference!

Abroad View Student Editorial Staff

Elizabeth Hague, 20, is majoring in Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies and political science at Washington University in St. Louis. While studying abroad in Egypt last semester she worked on using media materials to help reduce the gender gap in rural areas of the country. She has traveled to Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, France and Thailand, and over the summer, she studied in Morocco.

What is the inspiration for your project?
Being a woman in Egypt is a really interesting experience and it’s very different from being a woman in the United States. You’re faced with gender inequality on a daily basis, so I wanted to combat that. I think people focus too much on the issue of the veil when they look at Muslim women. I don’t think that’s the issue at all in terms of female empowerment, so I wanted to focus on something else.

What is number one on your life’s to-do list?
Right now, it’s just to be able to travel as much as possible and do as much work on the international scale. I’m really interested in gender relations so if I could do work with gender relations in the Middle East, I would be happy.

What is a funny story or favorite experience from your travels?
Probably one of my favorite experiences was when I was traveling in Thailand and we went to this thing called “Monk Chat,” which is basically a chance for the young monks to practice their English. So we went to it on a whim, but it was just so funny. There were these cute little 12-year-old boys, and my friend and I are both from Maine so we were trying to explain what a lobster was because they didn’t know what a lobster was. We were drawing pictures, it was just really fun. It was a really cool experience.

Tell me about an interesting experience you had with food while abroad.
I had some intestinal issues while studying abroad. I mean, the food my host family fed me didn’t really agree with me very much, so I ended up just not really eating for like two months when I was in Morocco. And then when I went to Egypt, they have all the Western chains, so I never eat fast food here, but I ended up eating fast food because I knew it wouldn’t make me sick. So really I would say my interesting food experience was going halfway across the world to eat McDonald’s milkshakes.

What is one misconception you had that was later disproved by your experiences?
I study Islamic studies so I learned a lot about the veiling and the culture of veiling before I left. I don’t really know what I was expecting when I went but the culture was much more relaxed than I had expected, especially in Morocco. They would wear a veil and tight jeans and a tight shirt. So that was really what surprised me. It was interesting to see how religion is interpreted in the culture. These things they will claim are religious, but if you know the Qu’ran, it’s not actually true. How culture and religion intersect is what I thought was really interesting. All the stuff I wouldn’t have learned if I had just stayed here were the most interesting things for me.

 Contributed by Lynn Kasanuki, AV editor

Canadian Mathieu Desruisseaux is a senior at Harvard University majoring in government. For his project, he proposes to travel to Nunavut, an Inuit territory in Canada, and work in information technology to help the Inuit community. The project would help train the natives to use the Internet and other communication methods to improve their government and revitalize their culture. He has previously studied abroad in Spain, spent a summer teaching in China, done human rights work in Senegal, labored in Demark and traveled to Mexico.

Where did you get the inspiration for your project?
I’ve never been there [Nunavut] personally but my godparents lived there for four years. I feel, as a citizen of Canada, I should really know about other nations in my own country, and we rarely hear about them.

What is number one on your life’s to-do list?
I want to go to Taiwan. Because I’ve observed while working from China that there aren’t a lot of human right organizations in the country really. You’re always working from outside of the country. But I feel like Taiwan kind of managed to go through such a drastic change and become a democracy. With an open culture, it’s one of the most progressive places in Asia. I would love to learn about Taiwanese culture.

What is a funny story or favorite experience from your travels?
I love Denmark. I want to move there eventually. Right after we went (we were on this fellowship program about minority rights in Europe), the cartoon thing happened at Denmark [the cartoon of Mohammed]. That was an interesting case study for us to have to discuss how a very homogeneous society like Demark is trying to cope with the new wave of immigrants. I guess I don’t have an interesting story. I mean I lived in the multicultural part of the Copenhagen so it was interesting to see veiled people among the Danes who are very liberal and progressive.

What are some of your other interests?
I play squash, I dance tango and I work at a center on Internet society at Harvard.

What was an interesting experience with food you had while abroad?
I think China would be the most interesting place. I mean eating little brains of little birds that they serve you on plates.

Christine Campigotto is a junior at the University of Denver. She is a Colorado native and is a double major in international studies and economics and a minor in mathematics. Her project proposal is on business training and networking for people in townships in Cape Town, South Africa in order to help them find access to funding and training.

Where did you get the inspiration for your project?
I studied in Cape Town last year for about six months and I was working in some of the townships around there. I was working with some people who were trying to get their feet off the ground in entrepreneurship and new businesses and they were having a hard time locating resources and they just weren’t sure which venues to go through and I thought there was big need for that. Because the resources do exist for them but there needs to be a way to make it more accessible

What is a favorite experience from your travels?
One of the guys that we were working with, we worked with him on his business. He wanted to start a restaurant and we got a team of about 30 to 40 kids to plan a garden to grow some of the vegetables for the restaurant to relieve some of the start-up costs. I worked on the garden project once a week for four or five months and it went from nothing more than a patch of a dust to a couple of weeks before I left actually things started to grow. And I ate a carrot. It seems kind of stupid, but to eat a carrot from the garden that had been dust, which these kids had put so much work into. . . And we didn’t even have hoses. We were using the bags that bread comes in and carrying bags of water over the garden. Knowing how much work had gone into it, how much time, and that it actually worked was awesome.

What was an interesting experience with food you had while abroad?
I remember the first night I went to this pizza place and one of the things on the menu was ostrich pizza, and I thought that was the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. It took me 10 minutes to eat it. But by the end, ostrich steak was like no big deal and I’d go and be like “Oh, ostrich sounds good,” I wouldn’t even think about it. It’s like chicken or steak, just another meat. You’ll get used to it. It’s funny.

What are some of your other interests?
I really like to ski. I’m from Colorado, and I’ve been skiing a lot. I’m also really into politics.

What is number one on your life’s to-do list?
I want to go to India. No reason why. I just want to go. I’ve always wanted to go to Africa and now that I have, India gets bumped up on the list.

Annie Hubben is a sophomore in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University hailing from upstate New York. Her self-created course of study is in cultural anthropology and dance. The combination of her interests is part of her project to help marginalized youth in Quito, Ecuador. It uses dance as a means of non-verbal communication to help kids understand how they are being perceived and how they express themselves and also as a mode for exchange. She hopes to examine what role dance and creative movements play in culture and use that with younger children to build self-esteem and confidence.

Where did you get the inspiration for your project?
Two years ago I went to Ecuador and found this organization that was working with homeless children living on the streets. The organization works with kids who want to get back on their feet and get off the streets. It does basic education: math, language and computer skills, as well as counseling and psychology. I was initially working with tutoring math and Spanish and a lot of the kids there who are 18 or 19 had children of their own already, so at any given day there were maybe six babies, toddlers under two years old that would be in the way while their parents were trying to study, and more of a burden for their parents at the moment. I ended up taking care of the youngest kids, worked with them, played with them. Growing up with this idea of not being able to play not being able to make noise, they were sullen. I would just play with them.

There was one kid who was really underdeveloped because he had been hauled in a sling on his mother’s back for a really long time, so his legs and arms were really weak and under-stimulated. I played with him almost like an informal physical therapy. I’d roll him over, he’d roll over and I’d do it all playfully, so he didn’t feel like it was therapy. In the 3 months I was there, he went from barely being able to step on his own to pulling himself up on furniture, and trying to stand And he was 13 months old. When I started, he should’ve been walking. How fast he recovered was an obvious benefit to that sort of physical play.

What is number one on your life’s to-do list?
Probably it would be to go back [to Ecuador] and try this project that I’m working on here. But also school, at the moment.

What was an interesting experience with food you had while abroad?
Their most known food is cuy, which is guinea pig, and that’s an indigenous traditional food. In the Andean and Indian families, cuy would be kept in the home, maybe 11 or 12 of them on the dirt floor in the kitchen. They were supposed to perceive when the visitor came into the house, by their [the cuy’s] reaction, similar to a dog for us would know if it were a good or bad person. So if a new guy would come into the house and they would get really agitated and start squeaking, they would know that this is a bad person and be wary of them. That was traditional food. They would keep them breed them and eat them. But I didn’t try it, because you have to be somewhat cautious and give your system time to adjust.

What is a funny story or favorite experience from your travels?
I was mostly in Quito but I did take a few weeks and took a tour around Ecuador and went into the rainforest and got to see a little of the tropical area.

What are some of your other interests?
Dance is my main thing. I do a lot of art also, but mostly dancing and taking classes. New York is great for that because there are always groups especially in the summer.

-Jessica Cheng, AV copy editor

Sofía Calderón Aramburu, 21, is a philosophy student at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, Mexico. She is a true world traveler, having visited Ireland, the United States (Chicago, Las Vegas, San Antonia, and Atlanta), France, England, the Czech Republic and Spain. She came to IVYS to build on her community development organization, “Un Techo para mi País México,” which translates to, “A Roof for my Country, Mexico.”

The organization—which spans nine countries in Latin America—provides emergency housing built by student volunteers for impoverished individuals and families. The goal is “to get inside a community, gain their trust, and create social development programs in order to empower them, in order to get them a permanent house,” Calderón said.

What is the inspiration for your project?
The original idea comes from Chile. They started it 10 years ago. We’ve started working on it in Mexico in March. But I was inspired because the inequality and injustice in Mexico is huge.

What is No. 1 on your life’s to-do list?
My biggest dream is to really help my country. I’m very concerned about injustice and everything so I would like to help to have a more just country. In this moment in my life, since I am still young, I think I’m helping with it [by being at IYVS], but in the future, I would like to get into politics, mainly doing research and making the laws. Not necessarily being a legislator itself, but making good laws.

What is one misconception that you had which was later proven wrong by your experiences?
While being here, I’m really impressed. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m at this summit, but I’m impressed by how American youth are concerned with volunteerism. I’ve heard a lot of things: that it’s really difficult and people don’t care. But here, I’ve seen millions of people with great ideas. I didn’t know that! They’re so helpful, and they know lots of stuff about Africa and India and other things I’ve never heard of before, so I’ve learned a lot here.

What is something you learned and want to pass on?
I’ve learned about many different cultures, like, not only from the actual people who live there, but in general, a way of living, and about ideas from other delegates and what they want to do in such different parts of the world. There’s this girl form Malaysia, Su Chin, who works with kids with Down’s Syndrome. I find her work very interesting. And there is also this guy from France, his name is Thibault, and he’s working in South Africa, working with the HIV problems. That’s really interesting as well.

-Erica Schlaikjer, AV editor-at-large

Many IYVS delegates look to enact change in exotic, faraway locations. For Claire Bangser, the summit has also provided inspiration to try to fix problems she finds in her own backyard.

The sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis came to the summit with a proposal for a project based on finding sustainable solutions to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the southwestern Kenyan town of Shompole. However, she said the summit has made her want to look closer to home to see where she can help.

“I found that IYVS is making me think a lot more about my own initiative, but also other things I want to do,” Bangser said.

The 19-year-old currently volunteers three days a week as a mentor for under-privileged kids at an after school program in the St. Louis area. Since attending the summit, she has thought about trying to do more to further the community interests of the poor population in the area, which according to Bangser, is economically stratified. She would like to help empower African-Americans in lower-income communities near St. Louis by educating them how to enact change in their neighborhoods.

But Bangser is not giving up her project in Kenya. She serves as the chair of the AIDS Initiative Committee at her school, which works with a non-profit organization called Mabisho in southwestern Kenya to increase HIV/AIDS education and awareness in the area. The community-based non-profit is located in a region that has an AIDS infection rate about twice as high as the rest of Africa.

Bangser’s group raises money for Mabisho to help establish councils of men and women to discuss HIV/AIDS-related issues and make HIV testing kits more widely available, among other initiatives. The group mainly serves as a venue for raising money because that enables residents of Shompole to find solutions to their own unique problems.

“We want to be enablers of their initiatives, but we’re not the right people to define those initiatives,” Bangser said. “They’re more aware of their needs than we are.”

At the summit, Bangser said she’s learned that community empowerment is one of the most important steps toward helping anyone.

“Sustainability needs to come from the people,” she said.

Bangser will continue to work with her student group to raise money for Mabisho. But until she has the opportunity to travel to Kenya, she will also turn her efforts toward problems that are closer to home.

“I think it’s silly to wait to do something elsewhere when you can do something here,” she said.

Contributed by Carolyn Beeler, AV staff writer



Diane Geng, 24, is earning her master’s degree in education at Harvard University, but she devotes much of her time working with the Rural China Education Foundation. Its duty is to team Chinese college students with volunteers from around the world to conduct summer classes for children in rural areas of China. The 10 months Geng spent studying abroad in Beijing as an undergraduate developed her interest in social inequalities between the urban and rural areas and after graduation, she returned on a Fulbright Fellowship, researching education.

What is the inspiration for your project?
I got the idea from two scenes. One is a scene of a class of very hardworking junior high students in rural China, studying by candlelight deep into the night, like 11, and they’re still studying. And this is even before the official school year has started. And these students are studying for the end-of-the-year high school entrance exam, which they have to take in order to continue their education. But the sad reality is, that even before the school year starts, it’s already a very high likelihood that the vast majority, like 80 to 90 percent, isn’t going to pass that test. So I became very concerned with what’s going to happen to them and whether the education they’re receiving is really meeting their life needs. Another scene would be in my apartment in Beijing. [There were] 16-year-old teenagers who had gotten low-wage jobs as security guards, all-night security guards. They had dropped out of school because they felt like it was irrelevant to what they were going to be, or what they wanted to get out of life. Just these two scenes always stuck out as sort of the gap between what schooling was providing and what rural children need.

What is number one on your life’s to-do list?
It would be to help teachers in rural China create sustainable models of quality education that really help rural children to become people who can make a difference in their communities.

What is a funny story or favorite experience from your travels?
In my travels in my research on education and in working with the villagers to establish this project, I lived in their homes, always. I adapted to the living styles and the missions all right, but one thing I wasn’t expecting was one night I went out use the restroom and it was really dark, and I didn’t have a flashlight. And they have outhouses and all of a sudden I heard some rustling under me. And I took out my cell phone, and flipped it open and there was that light and shined it on the ground. And I saw that there was this huge pig’s head right under me, like in the bathroom. And that was really scary.

That was a live pig in the hole?
That was his home. Yeah.

Tell me about an interesting experience you had with food while abroad.
I always feel like the best food I have in China, which is a country of many delicacies, are always when I go to villages. Somehow the way that they cook the vegetables and ingredients that come from their village always taste the best.

What is one misconception you had that was later disproved by your experiences?
There are so many. The first, most obvious thing was that I thought that the major problem in education in rural areas was lack of access to education. So the pictures of the crumbling down schoolhouses and the supposedly impoverished populations that couldn’t afford school. But what I discovered was actually the more underlying, root problem, [which] was whether what was going on inside the classroom was actually relevant to the children. That was a big misconception.

 Contributed by Lynn Kasanuki, AV editor