Conor B. 2014 Fellow
Conor trained in India with the National Outdoor Leadership School and spent time in South America for a service/learning program offered through Thinking Beyond Borders. He is now enrolled in his freshman year at Bowdoin College in Maine. He writes “Some classic wonders of the world have graced my presence this past year - the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the sacred Ganges River - but they were never close to my fondest memories. Those came from a much simpler and oft overlooked source: people. The best day of the past 12 months was a simple Thursday in Puerto Quito, Ecuador. My four host siblings and I were left to our own devices for dinner one evening. The five of us, aged 15-22, just hung out and talked about our dreams. Robinson wants to own his own mechanic's shop. Nicole wants to go to college. Eymi talks about being a mother. Anderson dreams of the big city. My dreams seemed difficult to articulate in my "conversationally competent" Spanish.
“But now I know what I would say to my host family. Though their ideal futures varied, they shared a common thread: they were fiercely protective of their home and their culture. They were modern teenagers like I am, texting friends and worrying about Facebook appearances, but they sought to incorporate their own identity into these mediums, and it scared them that their own world seemed to be slowly, but exponentially, evaporating. And they had ideas of how to stop it.
“That's what my dream is. To spend the rest of my life finding people like them, people who understand these issues we as foreigners all claim to understand from afar without ever interacting with them, and just listen to them. Hear what they have to say and then use my abilities - education, nationality, privilege, whatever - to help them hone their ideas to make change.”
Conor trained in India with the National Outdoor Leadership School and spent time in South America for a service/learning program offered through Thinking Beyond Borders. He is now enrolled in his freshman year at Bowdoin College in Maine. He writes “Some classic wonders of the world have graced my presence this past year - the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the sacred Ganges River - but they were never close to my fondest memories. Those came from a much simpler and oft overlooked source: people. The best day of the past 12 months was a simple Thursday in Puerto Quito, Ecuador. My four host siblings and I were left to our own devices for dinner one evening. The five of us, aged 15-22, just hung out and talked about our dreams. Robinson wants to own his own mechanic's shop. Nicole wants to go to college. Eymi talks about being a mother. Anderson dreams of the big city. My dreams seemed difficult to articulate in my "conversationally competent" Spanish.
“But now I know what I would say to my host family. Though their ideal futures varied, they shared a common thread: they were fiercely protective of their home and their culture. They were modern teenagers like I am, texting friends and worrying about Facebook appearances, but they sought to incorporate their own identity into these mediums, and it scared them that their own world seemed to be slowly, but exponentially, evaporating. And they had ideas of how to stop it.
“That's what my dream is. To spend the rest of my life finding people like them, people who understand these issues we as foreigners all claim to understand from afar without ever interacting with them, and just listen to them. Hear what they have to say and then use my abilities - education, nationality, privilege, whatever - to help them hone their ideas to make change.”