I've found some reviews for a summer program we are considering - I'm actually surprised to find them online (I really had to search, as the typical sites have more positive reviews, but they seemed too one-sided, which is why I went looking for more of the real experience.) My D is extremely interested in the program, but I think it sounds very intense for a 16 year old. I'm going to post some excerpts here. Each paragraph is from a different participant. For reference, the program lasts an entire summer. Each paragraph is from a different person's review. Yes, I chose the worst ones - but they were not hard to find. Need your thoughts please. I may not have a good perspective, as kids that age can deal with a lot more than we can!
It's extremely cold; I had to wear 5 layers of clothing and sleep with at least 2 jackets on with socks as well. It's pretty hard to breathe because of the altitude and if there is ever any sun, it'd feel very hot because you'd be very close to it.
Our house had one room. I shared a bed with my host sister who was the same age as I am. I stored my things in the room.
My 2 partners and I shared a queen-sized bed. Our bedroom was shared with the three children, who were on another queen-sized bed next to ours. There were no doors to our room, or perhaps just a cloth hanging there, but wasn't really private. All of our stuff was stored in our luggage on the floor or under the mattresses. We had a regular mattress, and at first we had an oscilating fan, but the kids would steal it during the night.
I had a latrine on my property. It was pretty nice compared to others that I have seen, but that really isn’t saying much. There was a complete metal closure around it and a lock on the inside, but there were a ton of bugs in there all of the time. I got used to it though. It was about 40 feet into the jungle from the house though, so at night I sometimes just put on some shoes and ran 10 feet into the jungle to use the bathroom instead of trekking out to the latrine.
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I bucket bathed once but that was a lot of work so from then on I washed myself with baby wipes regularly and washed my hair in the sink outside about once a week or once every 10 or 11 days.
I had extremely difficult partners that were lazy, rude, culturally insensitive, and passive aggressive with me, which was really frustrating and upsetting at times. I definitely couldn’t believe that after all my hard work in training that I had gotten stuck with two partners like that, and it was really hard to work around our differences at times. They picked a really nasty fight with me one time that was especially upsetting, and in that moment, i was kind of struck with disbelief and homesickness. It was a good learning experience for me as it enabled me to learn to adapt to personal differences and work around them in order to collaborate effectively and preserve the face of the program in our community, but having such challenging partners was definitely unexpected.
In my opinion, it sounds like a real growing experience, but not without risk. It would have been nice if they had asked the participants if they would do it again, or if they would recommend it to others - the questions asked were very specific and did not give the participants a chance to reflect on the overall value of the program.
I googled some of your quotes and found the webpage and read through all the posts. It was very informative and it sounds like a great program. That said, it also sounds intense. Most of the people you quoted also had positive experiences. To me, these posts tell me your daughter should expect challenges in some area: no indoor plumbing (if that really is a challenge), no daily showers/bathing, lack of privacy, shared bedrooms or beds. To many people, these conditions are actually part of the incentive to participate. Only you can make the decision. This may be a wonderful experience for your child now, or have her wait a few years and then do this summer program, or if she wants a summer program now maybe find one that doesn’t set off bells for you.
You iknow your kid best. It was easy enough to google to find the program. Anyway it’s clear that you are basically giving your kid an immersion experience in the third world. Much like the Peace Corps I think the benefits are mostly for the Americans, what they actually accomplish for the people of the country they are in is, I think, pretty dubious.
As for the comment about lazy, culturally insensitive partners. My son was amazed that student in his program in Irbid seemed not to have taken any of the description of the program seriously. (i.e. this in an immersion program, they take the language pledge seriously, the city is extremely conservative and traditional and students needed to dress and act appropriately.)
I knew the quotes were easily Googleable but didn’t want to post the name of the program because I didn’t want to be unfair. But - maybe by posting the most difficult experiences I did the same thing. Just wasn’t sure what the best way was to seek feedback.
My D is very interested in language immersion. She does not need community service (I know some kids tend to do these things because their high schools require some community service hours - she has plenty outside of this program and our HS doesn’t require it anyway.) But the service aspect appeals to her - although I agree with mathmom about the dubious aspect of whether they are really accomplishing anything. I tried to get her interested in something less intense (e.g., Middlebury or another program where you might not be living in these conditions) and she isn’t interested.
At any rate, now that the name of the program is out there, I would appreciate any other feedback you may have. It is so difficult to find real reviews of most programs, unfortunately.
My D participated in a similar program in Africa last summer, and had a classmate in the sister program in South America. They did not live with host families, but there were some primitive and challenging conditions, like the S. American kids having to collect water for bathing and drinking. They both want to return and it changed their lives.
What is your D’s interest in doing this-is it to make a difference? D’s program works with the locals to teach them ways to improve their lives. The kids work with them. It’s not just a feel-good thing where kids looking to goose their college apps swoop in and leave with an expensive footnote to their resumes. The kids who were chosen to go had a sincere interest in helping others and had to commit to continuing to do so on a local level on their return, and they have.
If your D just wants to go with a language immersion, there are other ways. But if you’re going to a developing nation and living with locals, you can expect the living conditions to be quite different from the comfortable lives most of us live.
D told me that “if I make a difference in even one person’s life, it would be important to me.” (This is when I was going on about how difficult this looked to be!) So yes - she does want to make a difference - although when she started researching programs, that wasn’t why she started the research in the first place. I think once she read about this particular program, something felt right to her.
Also, she wasn’t planning on mentioning it on her college apps. We have heard too many stories about kids who pay to go to fancy programs when they can easily help people closer to home. (I think these programs are often detrimental to an application, even if they are a learning experience, and she certainly knows plenty of kids going on “paid service trips” that are more like vacations.)
Also - I should probably note that D has an offer for a job this summer that she would be giving up to do this program.
They don’t need little kids from America to teach them anything about improving their lives, or how to dig wells. They need honest, decently paid jobs.
Yup, sorghum. The African town D was in has been decimated by foreign factory fishing enterprises, so the men in the village can no longer make a good living. The organization D paired with is concentrating on education so that both men AND women will be able to support their families once again. They did bring in a new method involving self-composting latrines that the local leaders asked to copy in other areas because it solved an important problem for them. No one came in to “save” them and then leave it all to crumble.
I agree with @sorghum they need jobs and perhaps direct donations will do more then sending little kids to teach them our values. As far as helping others I think it is very easy to find opportunities within local communities. One can go to Spain or east Los Angeles to study language.
I think this sounds like way too much for a 16 year old’s first international study abroad experience - even if those who survived feel like they got a lot out of it. You can get a lot out of a summer immersion without bed-sharing, pit latrines, etc…Our D had a great summer (6 weeks actually) of language immersion in Granada, Nicaragua as a 15 year old. Students were housed with middle class and upper middle class families. She had language classes in the morning and either field trips or helping out and tutoring low income kids at a community center in the afternoon (sports program, art program, academic assistance). She was pretty pleased with her volunteer experience - helping a 3d grader who was behind in math get caught up. Did she love every minute? Of course not - it was challenging being exposed 24/7 to another culture. But that challenge didn’t have to include using baby wipes instead of bathing.
I did a capacity building thing when I was a freshman in college that sounds similar to this. I bathed out of a bucket (or more commonly in the river) and I shared a two room hut with my host family (ranging from 4-12 people at any given time).
If that is something your D can work with then go for it. It’s definitely not for everyone.
That said, I agree with the above about volunteering and whatnot. It often does more harm than good. My host family specifically asked for American students to come help because they were trying to market an ecotourism farm to American and European tourists (they did not speak English and no one in their village could).
If she wants to “make a difference” there are millions of people in her own backyard that need help. If she wants language immersion, there are easier ways to do it.
You need to listen to the podcast of This American Life…I think that was the NPR show…where they interviewed the adcoms from a couple of colleges. When asked the MOST overused essay topic, it was “I went to blah blah program to make a difference, even if with just one person.”
The conditions you are describing sound very similar to my DD’s living conditions in very rural Africa when she was in the Peace Corps. Her living conditions had very little bearing on the value of her PC experience. In fact, she was living like the locals, which is what these folks do.
Having said all that, we know two kids who went on mission type several month trips to third world countries…and those two kids had to be evacuated from the countries with the help of the American Embassy there. The living conditions were not what the sponsoring agency suggested they would be, and there was no local support for the volunteers.
What does the sponsoring organization say about living conditions? If that description is radically different than what you are reading, I would at least contact the organization and ask what the real deal is.
“If she wants to “make a difference” there are millions of people in her own backyard that need help. If she wants language immersion, there are easier ways to do it.” So agree.
I know some of us will sound hard on this. There’s nothing wrong with going away to help others. But many young people say they want to “have impact” and then wait for showy opportunities. Somehow, the idea of making a difference sounds more glorious in a foreign country than in their own communities. It can be equally fulfilling and meaningful to hand a guy here his only meal of the weekend. And not just once or twice, having fun with friends. Making that commitment, whatever it is. 16 is not too young. We started our girls in 6th grade, locally. Over time, this start and the way they continued some dedicated service are actually among the profound experiences they remember and affected the young women they are becoming.
Nothing wrong with language immersion. As far as that goes, I did one (an easy one, not full immersion) at almost-16. I wonder what benefit one actually gets when the families are using dialect or local wording. I picked up a bit of regional accent. You want to look into how her language skills are improved by living with a family in a poor area versus a program that works with the more standard version of the language- and also reading/writing.
D1 ended up in a 2nd world country for 9 months, after college. Latrines, animals, no heat, no language compatibility, washing out of a bucket, watching the mom pluck the chicken that was running around moments before. She was ready.
Churches and other groups run mission trips in the US (many of these are very worthy, with hard labor and lots of interaction with those they help.) There are still trips to New Orleans, sleeping on some church floor. All sorts of good programs to needy areas. So much one can do. Best wishes for her.
So setting the immersion part aside, are we generally saying that these programs in general aren’t worthwhile to the people in the communities they are trying to serve?
Wow Thumper - that’s pretty scary about kids having to be evacuated while on mission trips. That kind of stuff really worries me. Was there a sponsoring agency?
I think my D’s thing is that she would like to keep doing this every summer right through college, not really for college. I have all the same concerns as were broached here and I’m not sure why she is so stuck on this one in particular. Certainly there are many other programs that are more glamorous if she truly were looking for “showy.” (She hates that sort of thing in general though - the kind of programs that she feels are vacations disguised as service. Many of her classmates have done one or more of those.)
She does do quite a bit “in her own backyard” so to speak - so it’s not necessarily an “either/or” proposition - and to be honest, the fact that she would be giving up paid employment is a bit of a concern too when she could stay employed and continue with local volunteering. (Ironically, she would be using the earnings from her current employment to pay for almost all of the fees for this program so she really will be broke by the end of the summer if she goes!)
Really, if someone can suggest something else that combines both elements, I would be all for it. No other programs that she or I have found have seemed as meaningful and interesting to her…but I do wonder if she is idealizing the whole thing.
Any effort can be worthwhile, as long as the effort is the main part of the trip (not just a few hours at the orphanage.) The question, to me, is more: if she wants to have bigger impact than today, she can do it here, for less cost. No vaccinations, no papers. The first longer project mine did was in Maine, eye-opening in every respect. They made a serious contribution to some quite needy and proud folks. They learned some impressive building skills, too. They did another to another area, and again connected with the family they helped. In college, they were both chosen for a continuing service program and worked in that local area, every week.
Many of the intl programs are just more costly, there is overhead, plane flights, local oversight. I think you realize what one chooses is, well, a choice. It’s good if it, somehow, makes sense to choose that 3rd world country over something in the US.
Yes, many programs were more harmful than helpful to the community.
The same ecofarm that I worked on had Christian volunteers come once a year. A big group- like 20 of them? They usually like painted the rooms or something simple that could be given to local people and in turn my host family had to provide them with food. They did it for a few years because the money they received was worth it at first. However, it became more of a burden and they stopped after their contract ended. In the end, they came out way behind rather than ahead and had just about nothing to show for it.