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Global Volunteering
an article by Nazanin Berarpour
When I went to a small village in Paraguay to visit a friend of mine on her Peace Corps assignment, I was able to see first hand the work that thousands of volunteers engage in worldwide. Every year seven to eight thousand volunteers set aside two and a half years of their lives to promote, share, and educate rural communities worldwide on skills that will hopefully better the local community at hand.
I shadowed my friend for a week, following her daily activities, to see how her work is impacting the local village. From workshops on women's health, to tips on sanitary food preparation, to participating in a local weekly radio program that promotes diversity and cultural understanding, the work that she is doing is her contribution to the global community.
As a visitor, the most interesting part of my visit was the cultural exchanges I had with members of the community. I was Dena's "American" friend, but I was also an Iranian. Explaining my background to someone who has no concept of where geographically the Middle East is, or someone who has never seen an Iranian before, was an amazing experience for myself and the people I encountered. To a community that was relatively homogeneous in make-up, I was quite the anomaly. But overall, The community was very open-minded in meeting me and learning about me, as I was to learning about their community and culture. I hope we both walked away from the experience having broken some stereotypes.
The idea of the Peace Corps and similar global volunteer programs is not only to provide the volunteer with global exposure and to promote cultural harmony, but also to combine our resources and knowledge as a global community and work together towards a better tomorrow no matter how small the first step or scope of the impact may be.
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
Do idealistic initiatives have an impact on history?,
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Latest reader comment:
| Quote (CPNN Administrator @ June 29 2003,08:20) | | Readers' comments are invited about this discussion question or about the article on which it is based. |
I believe that only idealistic initiatives have a postitive impact on history. I am thinking of the positive outcomes of the work of Gandhi and Desmond Tutu -- two idealistic, smart and committed people. Due to the many difficulties their historical movements, faced their positive impact seemed uncertain.
Similarly In the case of Isreal in Palestine the positive outcome of idealistic peace initiatives also does not seem certain now. However, in the future the impact will be clear in retrospect. PEACE WILL REIGN!!
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