North America | NGS Movement

Yvonne Nader, Voluntrek

Visiting a nearby archeological site, Uxmal.

Name: Yvonne Nader
Type of Work: Childcare
Region: North America
Length of stay: 1-2 months
Contact email: info@voluntrek.com.mx

Tell us about the organization you work for and what you do for them.
Some years ago I was looking for a volunteer program in Mexico. Being born and raised in Mexico, I wanted to give back and help in my own country, knowing there were many opportunities and projects where I could make a difference due to the economic, political and social situation of my country. I also knew that Mexico combines diversity, contrasts, beauty, culture and traditions that I had yet to discover. When I searched Volunteer Organizations for a Program in Mexico, and the offer turned out to be only two options (and they were offered by foreign organizations), I decided to look for a volunteer placement and accommodation on my own. Even though I had lived all my life in Mexico and knew where to look and who to contact, it was not such an easy task. I ended up volunteering for 6 weeks in the Yucatan Peninsula. I was supposed to teach English to small children, but when I arrived they told me they did not need an English teacher anymore and asked me to give Religion classes to 6 different groups and helping in the office one day of the week! I had no choice, so I accepted and it was great to see how the children loved to listen to stories from the Bible: Creation, Noah´s Ark and so on, and how much they learned from each of them.

Some pictures of my students during Hanal Pixan (Day of Death) celebration.

Share a favorite memory.
It is difficult to choose just one memory, but I remember my first day teaching. I prepared paper figures to give my class for all 6 groups. I thought I would use the material throughout the day in all my classes, but ended coming out of my first class with nothing but trash, since the children had destroyed the figures while playing with them! I had to totally improvise for the rest of my classes. Even though at first it was frustrating, it really helped me understand children and learned how to prepare the rest of my classes. It helped so much that some of the regular teachers came to me and asked how I managed to keep the group so quiet and interested in the class, since they could not manage to do that while they gave their classes. This was a great satisfaction for me because I had never given classes before, and these meant the children loved my class, paid attention and learned! I am grateful that I also got to explore another part of Mexico I loved: beautiful beaches, archaeological sites, cavern-cenote diving, Hanal Pixan (Day of the Death Mayan celebration), colonial cities and magical towns.

What have you learned from your experience? How has it affected your long-term goals?
It really was a life changing experience, so much that I am now the founder of Voluntrek, a volunteer organization in Mexico. When I went back to Mexico City, I realized it would be an incredible opportunity for people around the world to experience what I had just lived. It had not been so easy for me to organize it on my own, and thought it would be even more difficult for someone from abroad to organize everything without knowing the culture, language and country. Wanting to share this experience with people from other countries, a thought came to my mind, “Why not help others volunteer in Mexico so they do not have to worry about anything but making a difference”. Some years later I founded Voluntrek (www.voluntrek.com.mx), offering volunteer programs in Mexico that provide and support volunteers with everything they need to have the adventure they are looking for. Our job is to make sure that our volunteers do not have to worry about anything but giving their best at the non-profit organization they will be supporting, and enjoying this unique experience of discovering a new culture. Volunteers can relax and enjoy their time in Mexico, knowing that someone local, who has volunteered in Mexico and organized her own volunteer experience once, is behind all this, making sure I can share with you the same great experience I had in 2006! Voluntrek provides you the opportunity to be part of this process through a volunteer program that you can customize according to your budget, needs and expectations.

Noh Mozon: one of the amazing places I got to visit. We were practicing cenote diving and had to abseil down to the cenote.

Alyssa Llamas & Hosna Safi, getPHYT.org

Alyssa and Hosna in front of the UCSD Triton statue

Name, Age: Alyssa Llamas, 22; Hosna Safi, 22
University, Major: Alyssa: UC San Diego, Human Biology; Hosna: International Studies.
Region: North America
Length of stay: N/A
Type of Work: Medical/Public Health

Tell us about the nonprofit/social business you work for:
getPHYT.org (Public Health for Youth and Teens) is a public health blog catered to youth, teenagers, and young adults. By disguising public health in pop culture, we hope that our readers can learn some important public health information from getPHYT. Our mission is to raise public health awareness among youth and teens so that in turn they can raise awareness among their peers and communities. We’re actually working on the website from two different locations: Billings, Montana, and San Diego, California. So far, this hasn’t been a problem since we email, text, and call each other almost hourly.

What’s your typical day like?
Alyssa: I am a full-time CDC Public Health Associate and have been assigned to work at the Rocky Mountain Tribal Epidemiology Center in Billings, Montana. I work on getPHYT after work and on the weekends. I save any articles I find that could be useful for getPHYT.

Hosna: I am an intern for the Institute for Behavioral and Community Health and I’m working on community-based participatory research. We’re focusing on cancer prevention and physical activity amongst Latina women. After my internship, I usually work on getPHYT as well. For getPHYT, we probably work around ten hours each a week. We have to research information and make sure we are giving correct facts to our readers.

getPHYT

What inspired you to do this kind of work? If you are taking a gap year, what motivated you to do that?
Teenagers remain the most vulnerable age group in the United States, as many struggle with issues such as smoking, drinking, reproductive health, and obesity. However, despite the alarming number of problems, not many have attempted to educate this group in a way that will make them actually listen. We also wanted to bring to their attention other public health issues such as environmental health and emergency preparedness that teenagers may not think apply to them but are still very important.
We realized that there isn’t an online resource center specifically for the youth and teenagers that talks about Public Health in a way that makes its understandable and applicable. Blogs have become widely popular among the younger generation, so we thought the best way to present public health information was through a blog. We want the blog to be both entertaining and informative.

What kind of special skills do you need to do your job?
Web design, Writing, Social media

Do you feel like you are making a positive, critical impact on the global community?
We definitely feel like we’re making a positive impact. It’s hard for people, especially teenagers and youth, to want to read a health-oriented blog. Because we try to make getPHYT.org as entertaining as possible, we have shown our readers that public health is interesting, useful, and that there is so much to learn. Many of our readers have told us that they are learning while laughing, which is a great thing. Public health is all about prevention. Through getPHYT.org, we want to encourage our readers to be more health-conscious. We want to prevent health problems, before we’re forced to have to solve them.

What have you learned about the nonprofit and social business world in your experience?
Everything takes time. As much as we wanted getPHYT to become an overnight sensation, we realized that it is going to take a while for getPHYT to become established. It’s very important for us to network and to promote our website as much as possible.

Do you think you make a unique contribution to your organization as a young person? Is your perspective or approach different from others?
Yes, I think since we are two young people. We can relate to our readers and make the website particularly relevant to the age group. We don’t try to talk to our readers in a professional way, nor or are we talking down to them.

How do you see this experience fitting into your long-term goals?
Alyssa: I know that I want to be a public health professional, but since the field is so big, I wasn’t sure what to specialize in. getPHYT.org has helped me realize what I truly am passionate in. I want to work with young people (high school/college) and focus on public health education and social media. Since I have to do research for all of the posts, I’m learning more about public health. Through getPHYT, I’m learning what works and what doesn’t work when presenting public health information to the younger population.

Hosna: In the future, I would like to have a career focusing on child and maternal health, so this has been a great experience for me. It’s taught me how vulnerable adolescents are to poor health practices and how important it is to educate them early on.

What’s next?
Alyssa: I’m currently in a two-year public health program with the CDC. I definitely want to continue working for the CDC as long as possible. I also want to go to grad school to get a masters in public health.

Hosna: I will hopefully be going to grad school for public health next fall, so right now I am trying to make the most out of my gap year!

What is one thing you wish you knew before you came to your position?
We wish we knew how much passionate we were about public health and that we wanted to have careers in public health.

Do you have any advice for prospective gap-givers?
Find something your passionate about. Make sure whatever program you choose is a perfect fit. If the program or social business you want to be involved in doesn’t exist, then create it. Talk to your friends and see if you have similar interests and maybe you guys can start something together. Also, network, network, network!

Are you blogging about your work or travel? How can we stay in touch?
We would love our readers to comment on the site. We would love to hear what public health topics people are interested in and want to read about.
getPHYT.org
facebook.com/getPHYT
twitter.com/getPHYT
getPHYT@gmail.com

Would you be willing to take questions from potential Gappers?
Yes.

in Featured Gappers / Give Your Gap / Medical / North America by NGS Movement 15 Dec 2011 0 comments

Diewitt Duong, PDS & Pacific Partnership

Diewitt Duong and Eric Wang, about to board the Cleveland

Name, Age: Diewitt Duong, 22
University, Major: UCSD, Human Biology
Type of Work: Medical/Public Health, Education
Region: North America
Length of stay: Over two years with PDS, seven weeks with Pacific Partnership 2011

Tell us about the nonprofit/social business you work for:
I volunteer and work with the University of California, San Diego Pre-Dental Society and Free Dental Clinics. I attend weekly PDS meetings and I manage our Downtown clinic location on Wednesday nights. At our clinics, we provide free comprehensive care to uninsured low income families, veterans, and homeless individuals.
This past summer, I had the opportunity through UCSD PDS to spend seven weeks on a US Navy greyhull ship, participating in the US Navy’s annual humanitarian mission, Pacific Partnership 2011. The main focus of UCSD PDS’s involvement in this year’s mission was to be dental and health educators.

How did you find your position?
I begun attending UCSD PDS meetings through a mutual friend and stayed because of all of the interesting lecturers that we have speak to our club. We’ve had congressmen and women, surgeon generals, deans of dental schools, forensic experts, and others and I’ve realized how wide the scope of the dental field is. Through UCSD PDS, I began to volunteer as a dental assistant and x-ray technician with the Free Dental Clinics, gaining exposure and experience in being a dental assistant and I applied to participate in PP11 through UCSD PDS.

What’s your typical day like?
On Wednesday nights at the clinic I manage, I and my co-manager work to make sure that the clinic we run has an environment that is efficient, safe, and professional. We ensure that the volunteer dentist has all of the instruments and supplies that they need to provide treatment, our patient’s needs are being addressed, and that our volunteer students are being as helpful as they can be. Work outside of clinic takes about 3 hours and a clinic night can last 6 hours.
On the ship, my workday would average about 17 hours. I would wake up at 0430, get on shore at 0800, work on site from 0900 to 1500, get back on and and eat dinner by 1700, do offshore work until 2100, at which time I would go to sleep. (Though there was a rough six day stretch where I averaged 4 hours of continuous sleep in a day.)

What kind of people do you work with?
At the clinics, I work with other UCSD and local college students who are all interested in dentistry as a career and profession. I also work with dentists from around San Diego who volunteer their time on average once a month. We also have wonderful staff who help maintain the surrounding facilities.
On the ship, I worked with US the Navy, Army, and Marines. We also had a wonderful contingency from the Australian, Canadian, Malaysian, French, and Spanish armed forces.

What are your living accommodations?
For the clinics, I live in your ordinary UCSD student apartment housing.On the ship I lived in enlisted berthing area, with a small bunk and a community head.

What do you do in your free time?
In my free time, I like being outdoors. I enjoy playing and watching sports of all sorts (especially football and tennis). I am also a diehard fantasy football player (curse you jamaal charles!)

Share a favorite memory or story from your experience!
On PP11, we had a patient in Timor Leste who had two fused molars which were causing her extreme pain. The process of extracting both molars required the teamwork of both a US Navy dentist and a Japanese Army dentist. They spent about an hour extracting the teeth in a fantastic example of international forces joining together to provide essential humanitarian aid for those who most need it. Truly inspiring.

What inspired you to do this kind of work? If you are taking a gap year, what motivated you to do that?
I was interested in dentistry and UC San Diego just happens to have one of the best pre-dental societies in the nation. You get exposed to multiple facets of dentistry and healthcare. Going on Pacific Partnership was a once in a lifetime experience that I just couldn’t pass up. I hope to participate again in PP12!

How are you financing your time?
I work part time with UCSD and I have personal savings and parental support.

What kind of special skills do you need to do your job?
Medical expertise

Do you feel like you are making a positive, critical impact on the global community?
I feel like I am making a positive, critical impact. We were teaching nurses, teachers, families, teenagers, and children how to take care of their teeth and overall hygiene. We were exchanging essential information that will lead to sustainable growth. The overall dental and overall health of these regions will improve over time and only strengthen their overall growth.

What have you learned about the nonprofit and social business world in your experience?
I have learned that if you don’t ask for something, you will never get it. Before 2006, there were never civilians working on US Navy vessels on humanitarian missions. The adviser to the UC San Diego’s Pre-Dental Society worked very hard to get UCSD PDS to be on the first Pacific Partnership mission in 2006 and ever since then we have opened the doors for other non-governmental organizations to work with the military.

How do you see this experience fitting into your long-term goals?
All of this experience in dentistry has only advanced my plans. I have experienced and witnessed first hand the access to care issue in not only third world countries, but also locally, in a city as great as San Diego. I know that when I eventually go and graduate from dental school, I will give back to my community and I will continue to volunteer where I can. There are many who need and deserve dental care who simply can’t afford it. Dental pain, infections and mission teeth impair one’s ability to learn, to work, and to live. I view that health professionals have an obligation to provide their services back to their community.

What’s next?
Dental school is my next eventual goal. Between that, I am continuing to manage one of UCSD’s Free Dental Clinics and working with UCSD PDS. I also plan on working with Pacific Partnership 2012, possibly embarking in the mission this summer.

Do you have any advice for prospective gap-givers?
Give back to your community! Volunteer where you can to help out those less fortunate. Your experiences can humble you and make you aware of the need that is around you.

Are you blogging about your work or travel? How can we stay in touch?
You can reach me at diewittduong@gmail.com and also keep in touch with what University of California, San Diego’s Pre-Dental Society is up to at fdc-pds.ucsd.org.

Would you be willing to take questions from potential Gappers?
Yes.

in 1 Year + / 1-2 Months / Featured Gappers / Features / Give Your Gap / Medical / North America by NGS Movement 11 Nov 2011 0 comments

Earth Hasassri

Me with Dr. Tareq and another doctor at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency that serves Palestinian refugees. My work surrounded chronic diseases of hypertension and diabetes.

Name, Age: Earth Hasassri, 21
University, Major: UC San Diego, Physiology & Neuroscience, and Psychology
Type of Work: Medical/Public Health, Environment/Conservation, Education, Infrastructure (building houses, roads, wells), Community Development, Childcare, Human Rights
Region: North America
Length of stay: Less than one month

Tell us about the nonprofit/social business you work for:
ProWorld, Urubamba, Peru (http://www.proworldvolunteers.org/) – My experience here wasn’t a very great one. The volunteer project was good, but the logistics and organizational structure lacked experience and expertise. They need to work on more strategic planning before I would give them another shot.

Working in Urubamba, Peru in school 712, teaching these children math, arts and crafts, and environmental sustainability.

Cross-Cultural Solutions, Puriscal, Costa Rica (http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/) – Overall good, but very pricey. I can understand because they have a great structure and good communication. However, they are definitely a little more voluntourist-y than I would like. The community interaction was very minimal and it’s very difficult to see the sustainability in their work.

Damar Services, Inc, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA (http://www.damar.org/) – One of the best organizations I worked with. They work with children and adults with behavioral and developmental disabilities, and I strongly believe in their mission and vision. They have a very high success rate (96%) of helping children with Autism live more independent lives and I can clearly see how they work with the public system to make what they do sustainable in terms of policy change.

Casa Familiar, San Diego, California, USA (http://www.casafamiliar.org/) – They work with migrant and border issues. I really enjoy their organization and how much they try to outreach resources to their target population.

How did you find your position?
School resource and personal connections

What’s your typical day like?
4 – 6 hours of work per day, doing various tasks

Working in Santiago de Puriscal, Costa Rica on construction of a soccer court at an elementary school with limited resources.

What kind of people do you work with?
ProWorld – Young orphans and victims of domestic violence local to Peru. I want to warn people against working with orphans unless it’s a longer term commitment since orphans already have issues surrounding attachment and separation. If a short term volunteer were to make an orphan happy, they would relive the same pains when the volunteer leaves.
Cross-Cultural Solutions – Younger, elementary school children who were Costa Rican.
Damar – Children and adults with behavioral and developmental disabilities who come from all over the US.
Casa Familiar – Migrant and refugee populations, mainly from Mexico.

What are your living accommodations?
Hostel with ProWorld, volunteer house with CCS, hotel with Damar

What do you do in your free time?
Explore

Share a favorite memory or story from your experience!
http://earthhasassri.blogspot.com/2011/04/reorientation-invisibility-of.html

What inspired you to do this kind of work? If you are taking a gap year, what motivated you to do that?
Wanderlust and active citizenship

How are you financing your time?
crowd-sourced fundraising, scholarship from school

What kind of special skills do you need to do your job?
Language, Teaching

Prom Clothing for Children with Disabilities: orking in a residential facility of Damar Services in sorting out Prom Clothing for children with disabilities, providing opportunities for these children to have a social rite of passage.

Do you feel like you are making a positive, critical impact on the global community?
Only with Damar I was. I feel that it’s very difficult when working with non-profits to make a positive, sustainable change unless both top-down policies from the public sector as well as bottom-up efforts in social movements or behavioral changes are pushed for.

What have you learned about the nonprofit and social business world in your experience?
That change mostly happens on an individual level, and that can turn into a collective social movement if organized well enough.

Do you think you make a unique contribution to your organization as a young person? Is your perspective or approach different from others?
Yes, and I hope so.

How do you see this experience fitting into your long-term goals?
Made me more understanding of how social issues are intertwined and permeate within each other.

What’s next?
Medical school

Are you blogging about your work or travel? How can we stay in touch?
http://earthinjordan.wordpress.com
http://earthhasassri.blogspot.com/
http://earf.tumblr.com

Would you be willing to take questions from potential Gappers?
Yes

in Childcare / Community Development / Education / Environment/Conservation / Featured Gappers / Give Your Gap / Human Rights / Infrastructure / Less than one month / Medical / North America by NGS Movement 01 Nov 2011 0 comments

Madison McLaughlin: International Rescue Committee Volunteer

Name, Age: Madison McLaughlin, 20
University, Major:
Point Loma Nazarene University, Human Environmental Science, Business
Region: North America
Length of stay: 6 months
Type of Work: Academic Internship, Environment, Conservation

We’re especially grateful to Madison because she was our *very first* interview for GiveYourGap. Madison – thanks for your help, and for the great story your share below:

Meet Madison

How Madison Found Her Internship

What does Madison do?

Who does Madison work with?

What kind of skills did you need for this position? -You mentioned you were taking a gap year. Has work at the IRC influenced that decision? How has it affected your long term goals?

How has working with IRC impacted Madison?

What’s your favorite part about working for the IRC?

Any advice for anyone interested in volunteering for the IRC?

in 6 Months - 1 Year / Community Development / Environment/Conservation / Featured Gappers / Give Your Gap / North America / Video by NGS Movement 28 Oct 2011 1 comments

Lara Hamburger: Americorps VISTA, International Rescue Committee

Lara Hamburger

Name Lara Hamburger, Americorps VISTA
University, Major: Indiana University, Geography
Region: North America
Length of stay: 1 year
Type of Work: Capacity Building, Environment/Conservation, Agriculture

We first met Lara at the IRC City Heights Farmers Market. We lucked out catching her on her way out. Lara is an Americorps VISTA with amazing insights on nonprofit organizations, structural problems and making a daily impact on the lives of refugees.

Meet Lara