Personally Monumental

Jeff Lewis, a volunteer from the class of June ’10, wrote this piece eight months after ending his time in Santiago, Chile. He is currently working as the Development Coordinator at New York Needs You, which enables first-generation college students to realize their college and career ambitions.

Jeff Lewis
Illinois, USA

I had no idea what to expect form my experiences in Chile. Admitted to my class as a Fellow from a separate program, I knew my job, my responsibilities on paper, but how it would all unfold physically was completely a mystery. Naturally, I held my breath and dove right in. From Spanish classes with Tandem Santiago to touching moments in Colegio Anakena, the memories I gathered and things I learned I carry with me almost every day.

As a Jeannette K. Watson Fellow, my time in Chile began as a six-month contract in which I was to assist in Colegio Anakena and serve as Marketing and Communications Coordinator. It is those days in Anakena that stick with me most. I remember every student by name, recall the struggle to get Hernán to push through his ADD and finish a simple assignment, and the mad dash to play foosball during recreo (recess). My tasks at the elementary school were split between math, language, art and physical education classes. In the day-to-day chaos of instructing the students, I found the only thing that kept order was my cell phone, which I used to translate Chilean slang and various vocabulary words. I quickly looked up arts and crafts activities and songs we could sing together, only to find my phone to be a bigger distraction than the normal classroom environment. I annoy my friends with photos and clips of the students. My favorite: a recording of Tia Anita’s class dancing to “Soy Feliz,” in which Ignacio, no matter how hard he tries, cannot get the simple steps correct.

Back in New York, I miss the slower pace of Santiago; being stared at blankly because my Spanish is so difficult to understand; simple, clean, natural foods from Santiago’s farmer’s markets; the Saturday night cacophony of youth resonating from Bellavista. In the Fall, I will attend The New School to study Media and Social Change and Non-Profit Management, an interest that solidified while working in the VE offices as Marketing and Communications Coordinator. It was during those hours, planning my activities for Anakena classes, experimenting with Facebook and Twitter, and editing videos for the website that I began to really contemplate the possibilities within media, the Internet and social networking. While seeking answers to questions such as how to work with Facebook in a fashion that generates interest in VE, my growing passion for the students with whom I worked inspired me to strive to uncover how media, social and creative could breed volunteer interest and, of course, donors. How, through non-profit planning, do we get the technology into the classrooms and furthermore, how do we utilize it to teach?

Though unsure of exactly where graduate school will lead me, I am just as eager to dive right in as when I first landed in Santiago. I feel the same mix of nerves and anticipation and am tempted to utilize the all too familiar, “If I can handle that, I can handle anything,” but with Chile, that’s not the case. My time with VE was unique, a once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity. I expect future endeavors to be similar, educational, introspective, but none quite as personally monumental.

Moving forward with life, plans, pursuit of success, etc., I am grateful for my opportunity to visit Chile, appreciating most the lessons I learned and the contemplative questions raised—in order to get a class excited to learn, you must be excited to teach; creativity is the key; candy is like currency to children; the best way to get a 7-year-old to finish her art project is to sit down and color with her. It is in pursuit of answers to these inquiries that I make my life’s work, and appreciate VE Global for its significance in launching my life in the right direction.