Volunteer or Vacation?

Not all summer student volunteer travel programs are created equally. There are some programs that seem to give students what they want: an official charitable volunteer activity and a summer vacation, all in one package. Amazingly, colleges are on to that. As Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, was quoted in the New York Times, “We know the price of an air-conditioned hotel and a plane. It’s an act of affluent tourism masquerading as community service.”

Part of a Larger Pattern

Mr. Nassirian’s comment is not against vacationers, vacations or overseas travel. It’s not about programs that offer teens the opportunity to visit different cultures overseas with peers of their same approximate age and background. The admissions officer was objecting to students going on a vacation and attempting to pass it off as an act of community service. College admissions officers look for a long- term pattern of volunteerism or study, not a single trip the summer before one’s senior year in high school. A trip to China for a student who plans to major in international business and Asian studies makes perfect sense academically. It’s only fitting for a junior in high school who volunteers biweekly in the local hospital’s pediatric ward and plans to major in nursing or medicine to visit Ghana on a community health program. For a student who wants to be an ESL teacher in the United States, it makes perfect sense to embark on an extended language immersion program for Spanish.

Finding the Right Global Leadership Program

These are some of the reasons why it’s imperative to find the right global leadership program and ensure that it meets your needs academically, vocationally and personally. There are many benefits to travel and taking the opportunity to experience other cultures. Finding an organization that recognizes the different needs you’re trying to meet by going on an overseas program and has the experience to help you learn aspect of leadership and multiculturalism is the first step in the journey.

The Leadership Benefits of Volunteer Trips

Sometimes, you have to move outside of your comfort zone to begin to realize your real strengths and weaknesses. When you’re able to do practice leadership activities under the supervision of trained counselors in real-world situations, you learn that you can fail and still persist. You learn how to re-evaluate and retry.

The Language Benefits of Journeys Abroad

If you have the opportunity to travel in a country that speaks a language that you’ve studied as a “foreign” language back in the State, you have hundreds of chances every day to gain degrees of fluency. If you’re visiting a nation to which you’ll probably never return, you still have lessons to learn: of humility, trust and empathy the next time you see someone struggle with English when you return home.

The Personal Benefits of Travel

If begun with an open mind, encountering different cultures, languages, foods, religions and customs can open your eyes to different aspects of your own personality. Even as your eyes look outward onto different vistas, you can explore your inner beliefs, feasr, courage and curiosity.

Seek out Global Leadership opportunities and contact us today to learn more.

Foreign Language Requirements

Many high schools and some colleges and universities require a minimum number of foreign language credits. For some students, it seems like a terrible imposition — “I don’t plan on living anywhere else but here!” Others truly struggle to learn a new language. Individuals vary tremendously in their abilities to learn languages, and it may seem unfair that one individual just seems to learn it naturally while another labors to learn his latest list of vocabulary words. But there’s a host of benefits to learning Spanish in high school, not the least of which is the frequency with which you’ll probably run across the opportunity to practice it without leaving your state. Why? After English, Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the United States. Its slang has become mainstream, as have many Latino musicians. Comedians alternate between English and Spanish during their stand-up acts, and network TV audiences hear Spanish phrases so often now that it fails to register to them.

The Benefits of Speaking Spanish and Learning the Language in High School

If you didn’t learn Spanish as a young child, then high school can be the next best thing. After all, teens are the age group most closely in tune with popular culture, and American popular culture is full of Spanish words, phrases and slang. Other real benefits include:

Studying Spanish can improve your English vocabulary and help you on the English portion of your SAT test. How? Spanish is a Latin language, and many of the common words of the language are still very closely connected to their Latin roots. English also has many words of Latin derivation, so learning everyday Spanish can actually help you figure out the meaning of an entirely unknown English word.

• Learning a new language changes the anatomy of the brain and carves new neural pathways throughout it. These changes have been linked to a decreased chance of developing memory problems such as age-related dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. The new neural pathways also make it easier for you to learn any new information, and a second language helps you develop critical thinking skills as you learn to puzzle out the meaning of new words.

• Compared to other languages — Asian languages, German and English — learning to pronounce and read Spanish is relatively easy. The easier you find the language, the more encouraged you’ll be to study.

• Being fluent in both Spanish and English increases your value as an employee in any field you might pursue. If you become fluent enough, your career might just become one of being a translator between doctors and patients, judges and witnesses or customers and store managers, for example.

•  In addition to making you more marketable, knowing how to speak Spanish can make you more popular. You’ll be able to meet new people just by helping to translate or explain for someone.

•  Finally, in general, most Spanish speakers are remarkably friendly to individuals new to their language so you can usually count on help whenever words fail you.

Learning a foreign language like Spanish is more than just a good way to earn high school language credits–it’s also a great way to prepare for your future.

I loved this article in Newsweek A Team of Expatriates about the large number of advisors to President Obama who have lived or studied abroad.   As someone who has worked overseas for most of my professional career, I agree with the assessment that living abroad can greatly shape your worldview.  Working on an international level forces you to be open to a wide variety of perspectives and think critically about each one in order to make a decision.

While I was happy to hear about all the international experience in the Obama administration, its still disheartening to know that only 22% of Americans have a passport. The need for global education is greater than ever.  As the article mentions, for this generation of students the greatest opportunities for work, investment and fun will be at the international level.