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[mackennaalvarez-blog]

Volunteering Abroad: An Opportunity for Growth

As an education major and someone who is deeply passionate about serving others, volunteering was something I knew I wanted to do during my time abroad in Buenos Aires. I had worked with organizations in New York designed to address education inequality in the United States and was interested in learning more about similar organizations and movements taking place in Argentina. The staff at NYU BA was incredibly supportive and helped place me in a nearby organization dedicated to providing equal opportunities for all children. Servicio Social Agustiniano Gregorio Mendel offers several programs to children in the area, most of whom come from poorer Bolivian and Paraguayan immigrant families and lack the resources to get help with school related activities. To address this, SSA provides tutoring for children ages 7-12, after school games and other recreational activities, group reading to students, and more. I personally got the opportunity to work with children ages 2 to 4 Friday and Monday mornings and assisted them through games, storytelling, and group singing.

After the initial excitement of being hired to volunteer at SSA subsided, I began to doubt my abilities and question if I had made a mistake in volunteering. I wondered if I would be able to speak Spanish well enough to communicate with staff, if I had enough time to devote each week to this commitment, or even if it was my place to volunteer there to begin with. As a privileged American student, was it right to get involved in an organization I knew little about just for my own experience? However, upon arrival, the staff at SSA quickly quelled all of my fears and welcomed me into their organization with open arms. Playing with the toddlers there and watching them interact with one another reminded me of why I got into education in the first place and reaffirmed my passion for working with students. Observing children interact as growing human beings, whether it’s through comforting one another when one is crying, sharing toys and establishing friendships, or developing an identity that is uniquely their own, is truly a beautiful phenomenon that I was lucky enough to witness. What I thought would be an added stress that could take away from my time to study or explore, became a release and a way to escape the demands of my schoolwork. Through gaining hands-on experience with instructional practices and being forced to shed my inhibitions for the sake of being goofy, I grew not only as a future educator but as an individual personally struggling with shyness and insecurity. Those three hours I spent at SSA each morning, ones which I initially dreaded, ultimately became the thing I looked forward to the most.

Much like my decision to volunteer, my decision to become a Global Wasserman Peer was motivated by my career aspirations as much as it was by my personal desire to improve myself. Both have allowed me to grow more accepting of my flaws and become more comfortable in my own skin as I am required to take initiative and act as a leader. With each opportunity, I not only get to help students achieve their future goals but teach myself how to find strength in my vulnerability along the way.

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