Who becomes a WorldTeach Volunteer?
WorldTeach volunteers come from diverse backgrounds throughout the U.S. and abroad. Volunteers can be recent college graduates, current college students (for summer programs), working professionals, married couples, retirees, or anyone else committed to international service and education. While no teaching or foreign language experience is required, volunteers should be flexible and ready to deal with the often unpredictable nature of living and working in a developing country.
What do all WorldTeach volunteers have in common?
Winter 2008 WorldTeach Journal Contest
Thank you to everyone who participated in this winter’s Journal Contest. As with our Photo Contest, your entries were above and beyond our expectations. It is always a pleasure for us back here at the home office to live vicariously through you, delving into a slice of your lives as you find your way living and teaching in a foreign country. When describing our programs to potential volunteers, we always try to convey not only the teaching aspect, but also how they too will learn something about the lives and experiences of others. The winning entries embody this truth with grace, courage, and humor.
Expecting the unexpected becomes second nature here in Ecuador. Volcanoes spurting ash, parades marching down the streets, eating guinea pig for lunch—these exemplify just a few of the many daily surprises that Ecuador gives her volunteers. Though with all the unbelievable moments that I have experienced already, the one thing that continually surprises me and touches me to the core is the generosity of my students.
As I walk down the street, a man looks at me, gasps, and stops in his tracks. To my left, a girl tugs on her boyfriend’s arm, points in my direction, and whispers urgently into his ear. I smile politely at their startled faces. Finally, a man with a two-year-old boy stops and tentatively holds his child out to me while reaching his other hand into his pocket. I know what’s coming.
As I stared dejectedly at the greasy severed limb that was my dinner, reminiscing about Christmas pudding and brandy sauce, a portly man leaned over and asked me, “So what is Christmas like in England? Do all your family get together?” “Actually, no,” I said. “Normally it’s just my parents, my sister and me.” I was surprised by the collective moan of sympathy that rose from the table. I had been so wrapped up in the luxuries missing from this Ecuadorian Christmas that it had never occurred to me that my family’s version, with its pitifully small gathering, could seem so sad and unpleasant here.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Seated uncomfortably close between two professionally-dressed school administrators in the front seat of a bakkie, with the gear shift digging painfully into my thigh, I nervously watched Elias, my friend and fellow volunteer. He disappeared on the dusty road behind me as the rickety bakkie jolted forward onto the unpaved trail bound for Nkurenkuru. As the bakkie approached a cluster of buildings in the distance, I realized that this empty nothingness—these few school buildings surrounded by mud and grass huts dotting the fields—would be my home for the next few months.
My director adamantly began to insist that I buy a raffle ticket. I handed him 500 colones and haphazardly shoved the ticket in my pocket. I hadn’t given the situation a second thought until later when the raffle began. I looked everywhere for my ticket but couldn’t find it. When they called out the number and nobody claimed it, I cursed myself for losing a potentially fantastic award. The teacher then called for the prize and a cowboy paraded in, hand raised high in the air, holding a pig’s head.
Winter 2008 WorldTeach Photo Contest
Second graders Jita (left) and Daryl (right) participate in one of the most popular games on Majuro: "Who can stay upside-down the longest?" Please don't be confused by Daryl's upside-down thumb's up; one need only look at his smile to see that being upside down is flippin' fun.
One of my 8th graders from Namdrik Atoll, where I spent a year as part of the Marshall Islands 2006-2007 program.
In Las Tunas, Ecuador, the students play on the beach during recess.
Winter, a grandfather from my village on Ebon Atoll, lived with a large family right next to my school. I often sat with them after classes and learned to cook (and eat!) Marshallese food and practice my Marshallese. Winter works his way through a pile of coconuts to make copra (dried coconuts), the island's only major export and their main source of cooking fuel.
My three-year-old host brother Joselito, from Portoviejo, is very proud that he is the father of two baby chicks. He loves to have his photograph taken with them, and here, he is pictured with ¨el pollito blanco¨ and ¨el pollito negro,¨ as he calls them. Every morning I hear him saying ¨Don't worry, don't cry, your dad is here now!¨ It is the most precious thing!
I took this photograph in a neighborhood close to where I lived in the northern suburbs of Guayaquil. I did not know the people who lived in the house, but I passed by this window frame daily on my way to volunteer at a governmental job training school in the center of the city. It became part of my daily routine to admire the fake rose on the windowsill, framed against a curtain of embroidered flowers. The pairing of synthetic representations of nature encapsulated a common theme I found in the stories of urban Ecuadorians. They all had left the campo, the rural farm lands, to find work in the city. The fake flowers connected them to this past and illustrated the problems with modernity in the developing world.
WorldTeach Volunteers 101
Meet a few WorldTeach volunteers who learned more not only about the world, but also about themselves.
Watch as award-winning documentary filmmakers Tim and Laya Hawthorne take you around the world to show you WorldTeach host communities and speak with WorldTeach volunteers.
Learn how you can put your experience to work.
Read about exciting local initiatives and international development projects that our volunteers have pioneered in their host communities.
