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Show Students give up summer free time to serve children BY JEN BEASLEY Staff Writer With summer inching closer, most students will be bolting from the halls of education to savor their hard-earned free time. But a few of them are going to turn around and spend it educating others. It's a summer of service, starring USU students. Lisa Bodily, who is graduating with a degree in elementary and early childhood education, had planned to spend the summer with a friend in San Francisco. Instead, she decided to teach English in Ukraine for six weeks beginning in June. "Ukraine is more adventurous than San Francisco," Bodily said. Bodily taught English to students in China in 2006 through the International Language Program, and said she wanted to do it again because of the experience she had the first time. "I just love the children," Bodily said. "I love the friendship and relationship that you develop with them, even though I didn't speak the language, didn't speak Chinese, you really make a connection with them." The kids learn English through a system of total immersion and are rewarded with tokens when they speak correctly. Bodily said at the end of the year, the children get to buy things with the tokens. Bodily said she has to pay for the program, but it's worth the airfare to really get to know another culture. "I love to travel, but I don't like to go for just a week and see what it looks like," Bodily said. She said there are still openings available for anyone interested, and no teaching experience is necessary. Tiffany Ivins Spence, a PhD student in instructional technology, plans to go to Nepal in May with the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning to help maintain and expand a program that provides access to information and technology to people in rural Nepalese villages. Spence, who has done extensive work with literacy programs in Pakistan and Sudan, said one of the keys to ensuring literacy endures in a society is providing people with access to information. "A central concern we face as we're implementing literacy programs is how do we sustain an environment of literacy after the program ends? They go home to places where there are no books, no libraries, and everybody is illiterate," Spence said. To help provide the necessary access to agricultural, medicinal and other important information to villagers far from Katmandu, the COSL has established "mini libraries" called Youth Managed Resource Centers at magnet locations in Nepal that have dial-up Internet and DVD databases. Spence said the system allows villagers who used to have to take a one-day trip into Nepal for information to now get it by walking just a few hours. Rural youth hike into a center and find the content that would be helpful to their village, Spence said, acting as informational "ambassadors" to their villages. The COSL has already established two YMRCs in Sankhu and Gorkha, Nepal. Spence said the May trip, which she is taking with other members of the COSL, will assess how the program is going so far as well as test interest in the resource centers in villages that are not yet using the program. Another student group may go in August, and another in December. Spence said the program, which has received funding from USU, may extend for the next five years. Though the dial-up Student Summer Wo $12-$15baseappt PT and FT Openings Customer Sales and Service Flexible Hours Evening and Weekend Shifts Available No Experience NecessaryExtensive Training Provided All Majors May App;y Some Internships and Corporate Scholarships Available No Door to Door or Telephone Sales •**Z t\ ki Statesman Photo Illustration TEACHING CHILDREN IN UKRAINE is what Lisa Bodily, a senior in elementary and early childhood education, will be doing this summer. She did the same thing in China and she, like other USU students are excited to serve during the hot, summer months. Internet is slow, villagers have already shown great enthusiasm for the YMRCs, she said. "For them it's so groundbreaking, the whole idea of it, that people will line up 50 people in a line, to use the dial-up Internet," Spence said. The program, conceived in 2004, was interrupted by a civil war in Nepal from 2005 to 2006, Spence said. Even so, she said one young woman managed to keep her resource center open despite the challenges of war and being from a lower-caste family. Spence said that woman, Rimita, is an example of how the information centers can improve the lives of the rural and lower-caste people in Nepal. Spence said the COSL plans to bring Rimita to USU in the fall as a keynote speaker to raise interest in the program. Eventually, Spence said the goal is to make the resource centers, which have to date been subsidized by outside resources, self-sustainable, perhaps by implementing a nominal usage fee for villagers. She said any student who would like to help with the establishment and maintenance of these resource centers is encouraged to get involved with the YMRC. "For me, the reason Vd love to involve students in this project is it was such a pivotal part of my education to go out in the field and see reality first hand," Spence said. Joli Johanson, a senior in interdisciplinary studies, will be devoting herself to a different kind of education this summer, helping to train athletes on the USU Special Olympic team. Johanson said though she will be making the commute every Saturday to practice from Morgan, the long drive is worth it to her. "It takes me longer to get here and back than it does to do the practice," Johanson said. "I wouldn't do that unless I really loved it." In June, Johanson will help the USU Special Olympics team compete in the Utah Special Olympic Summer Games in track, cycling and soccer. Johanson is also a coach of Liz Leatham, who will be competing in track in the Special Olympic World Games in China in September. Johanson said the Robins Award the USU Special Olympics team received recently for Organization of the Year was "well-deserved." "We travel all over the state, we plan huge events on a monthly basis and we're all college students," Johanson said. But she said there's a trade-off. "You just can't go to Special Olympics and have a bad day," Johanson said. For more information about teaching English in Ukraine, call International Language Programs at (801)374-8854. For more information about YMRCs in Nepal, email tiffanyivins@gmail. com. Logan 435-752-5780 CDA, ID 208-667-8071 Boise 208-344-3700 Walla Walla 509-525-9190 I f ' Ogden 801-525-9789 Salt Lake City 801-747-5240 l l p i l i n g s 406-252-2880 Pocatello 208-478-2995 lii Grande 541-962-0432 Provo 801-426-5315 # p & . Spokane 509-892-1723 -jenbeasley@cc.usu.edu n Generations of Exceptional Jewelry lamond balle 7- Jewelry 7 / J^ine "((four- Stigagenteitf flUng. tSpeeiatht 4 5 NORTH MAIM ., • I 435-753-4870 30% OFF FOR USU STUDENTS FREE Titanium Me us' Band with jjttEchse of Engagement Ring! |