Short Summary
Every year, approximately 3,000 Americans are abroad with Peace Corps Volunteers, serving in various countries in need of help. After over 2 years of application processes, I have been accepted to go to Ethiopia as an English teacher. I will be in the country for over two years, living in one of their small villages. My aim is to get children involved in school, teach them English, and hopefully get them into college and successful careers.
Each volunteer has secondary projects, and those include youth development and gender empowerment. Basically, each volunteer helps their village or town however they can, trying to create self sustaining projects, so the people can utilize the work you do for years after you are gone. I want to help young girls go to school in a community that tends to only have boys go.
What We Need & What You Get
The funds from this campaign are aimed for supplies. I am going to live in rural Ethiopia for two or more years, which requires certain items that need to be purchased. This includes both school supplies, like English books, grammar books, paper, dictionaries, and other supplies. I will also need personal items, including medical supplies, toiletries, climate-friendly clothing, a good pair of shoes, and the actual suitcase, among others. 100% of the money raised in this campaign is going towards volunteering in Ethiopia, with an emphasis on supplies for local children.
Peace Corps Project
Katherine has been selected to serve as an English Language Facilitator in Peace Corps Ethiopia’s Promoting English Language Learning in Ethiopia (PELLE) program. In that role, she will be helping students and teachers to improve their English language capacity, which is an important educational priority for Ethiopia. The Peace Corps believes that she has the demonstrated interest, background, and education to perform this job, as well as the flexibility, maturity and resourcefulness to handle the challenges of living in a developing country.
Peace Corps Ethiopia is fortunate to be a primary partner in the Ministry of Education’s initiatives to improve the proficiency and use of the English language across all tiers in the education system. The focus that was on primary schools and teacher training colleges during the first three years of the Peace Corps Education program’s existence is shifting to high schools as the program evolves. The program is modeled for capacity building based on Peace Corps’s existing success with Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) programing in other countries. Like any evolving program, there have been and will continue to be hiccups and challenges to overcome, but there will also be an enormous opportunity for you to help us build an innovative and well respected TEFL program here in Ethiopia.
Other Ways You Can Help
For more information about volunteering yourself, visit:
www.peacecorps.gov/