Hayden works out of a sub-district administrative office (SAO), sort of like the sub-district town hall. She said her job is very open-ended; her responsibility is to develop relationships with as many people in town as possible and get to know their needs so she can help them create projects that serve their community. "Right now I'm mainly working with schools," Hayden continued. "My town has a population of about 3,000 - like Sunbury - and has three schools. I teach a couple of hours a week at each school and I also do day camps that teach teachers and students skills like environmental protection, problem solving, project planning and teamwork." Hayden said she recently started a youth group at one of the schools with 28 students, ages 8 through 12. They meet once a week to work on projects of the student's choice, like creating a recycling bank to reduce the amount of trash in and around the school. Some projects the students want to do in the future include putting on a traditional Thai dance festival for the community. They also would like to make art out of plastic bottles, and sell baskets and hats that villagers make using a traditional grass weaving technique. "Aside from my projects in the village, I have many responsibilities within the volunteer community," Hayden said. "I am an editor of Sticky Rice, the Peace Corps Thailand newsletter. I'm also on the committee that helps train the next group of volunteers, and I maintain a World Wise Schools relationship with a classroom of elementary school students in Pennsylvania."
Hayden Sterling is serving in Thailand as a Peace Corps Community Based Organizational Development (CBOD) volunteer
Former BW student in Peace Corps
Thursday, February 25, 2010
By LENNY C. LEPOLA
News Assistant Managing Editor
(Editor's Note: The following article was culled from several late January and early February email communications).
Many students in the United States take a break between college and settling down to work a career track. They may travel and see a few sights, often touring several European countries with a rail pass and staying in youth hostels with friends.
European students do something similar, but with a difference.
First, they make a distinction between college and university. In Europe, the word college is used to describe something like our Joint Vocational School system, but with two years of secondary and two more years of post-secondary education under one academic roof, or a European college can be a two year junior college.
When European students go off to a four year post-secondary educational facility they go to a university. That distinction is important to them; they're "at university".
Second, European students typically take a year off either before or after university, but many of them, if not most of them, combine travel with some form of service work; it seems to be a European rite of passage to see the world and at the same time roll up the proverbial sleeves and help out.
Hayden Shelby, a 2003 Big Walnut High School graduate, is in many ways, a typical American student. At Big Walnut she excelled academically and was an exchange student in France for a semester during her senior year.
Hayden was also involved in many high school clubs and sports, including track and field (shot put and discus), show choir, student council, French Club and National Honor Society. She was also a High O'Brian Youth Leadership Conference (HOBY) delegate during her sophomore year, while a junior she served as student representative on the Big Walnut Board of Education, and received a ZONTA Outstanding Young Woman Award as a senior.
After graduating from Big Walnut as salutatorian, Hayden Shelby attended university at Cornell where she received a B.A. in Economics with a concentration in International Relations. At that point Hayden was still a fairly typical American young lady, but her life was about to change; her rite of passage was approaching and it would not be typical.
"I worked in marketing for a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. after graduation," Hayden explained. "I quickly realized that the business world was not for me, and my corporate office was located on the same block as the national Peace Corps headquarters. After spending a few months walking past the Peace Corps office every day I decided it was time to apply, and the rest, as they say, is history."
Today, Hayden is serving in Thailand as a Peace Corps Community Based Organizational Development (CBOD) volunteer. For safety and security reasons she is not allowed to reveal the exact province where she works, but she can say that it's located in the south along the long isthmus that connects Thailand to Malaysia.
"I arrived in the country exactly a year ago, January 28, 2009," she said. "I came with 50 other volunteers, and we all trained together for 10 weeks in a town about three hours north of Bangkok. After training I moved to my permanent site; I've been here for about nine months. I have 15 months left to go in my service, so that's a total of 27 months in country and two years at site."
Hayden works out of a sub-district administrative office (SAO), sort of like the sub-district town hall. She said her job is very open-ended; her responsibility is to develop relationships with as many people in town as possible and get to know their needs so she can help them create projects that serve their community.
"Right now I'm mainly working with schools," Hayden continued. "My town has a population of about 3,000 - like Sunbury - and has three schools. I teach a couple of hours a week at each school and I also do day camps that teach teachers and students skills like environmental protection, problem solving, project planning and teamwork."
Hayden said she recently started a youth group at one of the schools with 28 students, ages 8 through 12. They meet once a week to work on projects of the student's choice, like creating a recycling bank to reduce the amount of trash in and around the school.
Some projects the students want to do in the future include putting on a traditional Thai dance festival for the community. They also would like to make art out of plastic bottles, and sell baskets and hats that villagers make using a traditional grass weaving technique.
"Aside from my projects in the village, I have many responsibilities within the volunteer community," Hayden said. "I am an editor of Sticky Rice, the Peace Corps Thailand newsletter. I'm also on the committee that helps train the next group of volunteers, and I maintain a World Wise Schools relationship with a classroom of elementary school students in Pennsylvania."
It's not all work and no play. There is socialization and travel with other Peace Corps members. When Hayden has free time and extra money she generally meets up with other volunteers in touristy areas where they eat American food, catch a movie, or go to the beach.
"Peace Corps volunteers in Thailand are really lucky to have such places in the country," Hayden said. "In some ways it's disconcerting, though, because the areas in which we live and work are very rural and have a traditional Thai culture. Many of the people in my village have rarely, if ever, actually spoken to a foreigner before. However, only a hundred miles away, some of the beaches have more westerners than Thai people and look as though someone picked up a western European city and plopped it on a Thai beach."
After Peace Corps, Hayden plans to pursue a career in education.
"I'd like to get my masters in math education and teach in under served areas for few years," she said. "Ultimately, I'd like to go into teacher education at the university level and work to improve teacher education all over the world. I think the key to development is improved education, and the key to improving education is developing teachers."
More immediately, Hayden looks forward to returning home when her Peace Corps deployment is over and reconnecting with family and friends.
"I want to meet and spend some time with my nephew, Kale, who was born in August," she said. "He'll be about a year and a half old when I get home. I also want to get involved in gymnastics again. I got back into it my sophomore year of college, and I've been doing and teaching gymnastics ever since. Some of the things I miss most about home are trampolines, bars and balance beams."
For a closer look at Hayden Shelby's Peace Corp experiences in Thailand visit her blog, Thai Ginger: The Adventures of Thailand's Redheaded Stepchild at <http://thaigingerhayden.blogspot.com/>.
From Pleng's Song, a September 20, 2009, Hayden Shelby blog entry:
At twelve years old, Pleng is probably my best friend here. She came to the first English lesson I taught out of my house the week I moved in, and she rarely misses a week. She's taught me how to make papaya salad and goes out of her way to tell me if school is cancelled, a courtesy the other teachers often don't afford me. But our favorite activity together is running. Every Saturday morning she and her 8-year-old sister, Pray, come to my house at 7 a.m. sharp, and we go for a run. We started out at under a mile, just to the temple and back, but we've recently gone up to 5k. We go places in the village I would never go on my own. I agree to protect them from dogs if they take me to see their classmates' houses.
If (Pleng) does really well on an upcoming national exam she can qualify to go to school in the provincial capital. The problem is, as smart as she is, she's been woefully under prepared by her tiny school. And even if she qualifies her family would have to pay for transportation to and from school every day. Her grandmother recently sold their rubber orchard, so they live off of those proceeds and what little her mother makes selling homemade sweets.
Before I left for Thailand I left my parents a framed quote from my favorite columnist from the Cornell Daily Sun. It reads, "The necessity of ‘finding ourselves' only applies to the lucky few whose main concern is not ‘feeding ourselves'." When I consider the expense that has gone into "finding myself" - dance lessons, sports camps, exchange programs, plane tickets, voice lessons, drama costumes, etc. etc. - I wonder if Pleng really stands a chance.
I've recently realized that there is a problem with the quote I left my parents: it's not the "necessity" of finding ourselves that is limited to the wealthy; it's the ability. You need only spend a few hours with Pleng to know that she needs to find her place. But the chances that she will ever find that place in her tiny village are small. I can't teach her everything she needs to know to pass that test. I can't pay for her to get to school every day. It just might be that the most valuable thing I can teach her is how to run.
