Students and parents look at higher education as a means to building a sense of direction for the future. It is with hopes of fulfilling dreams and a rewarding career that most of us attend college. This path can be flexible as with law, medicine, or business; for others research and new technologies are more appealing; for some instead, it is a call to a non-traditional path. Non-traditional paths many times involve adopting a cause and gearing your life to create solutions to social issues which might be occurring far away from home. A non-traditional path is not an easy journey, but Ohio State offers resources to help individuals succeed and touch lives in remote places.
Meredith Fabian, for example, received from Ohio State the experience and opportunities that allowed her to build a career in a non-profit organization. She visited her alma mater last February to speak to International Studies students about her experiences in creating work and volunteer opportunities in Latin America. She reflected on her own experiences at The Ohio State University, stating that the International Studies Program was formidable in building her foundation. “The courses, instructors, and advisors provided me with guidance, encouragement, and insight into the world’s complexity,” she stressed, “but it is still important to seize the moment by taking the time to talk to professors, networking with peers and professionals.”
Fabian urged students to be proactive in involving themselves in their field. “I knew I wanted to work in Latin America, so I elected to minor in Spanish, take part in a study abroad to Ecuador, intern at the Columbus Council on World Affairs, and in 1998, I organized a campus-wide emergency aid package to deliver food and necessities to victims of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras,” she said. Fabian encouraged students to think and act like social entrepreneurs by envisioning and creating solutions.
After graduating in 2000, an opportunistic moment introduced Meredith to Peru, where she worked in community development, taught English to subsist, and was immersed in the rich Peruvian culture. There, she uncovered a passion to work with street children while working for a university in Trujillo, Peru. While many Peruvians live below the poverty line, she learned that when it comes to children the community had strong grassroots ethics toward the provision of proper care for them. In order to build upon her expertise in this area, she wrote a letter to the executive director of a small charity located in Brazil and shared with him her calling to serve and improve street children’s lives. He replied and helped her find a host family and a volunteer position; she paid her own way and taught herself Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro for six months. Upon her return, she pursued a Master of Arts at Columbia University, where she focused her research on street children in the Andes and Amazon regions.
For Fabian, the experiences she encountered at Ohio State and in Latin America, led her to Covenant House, the largest privately funded non-governmental organization in the Americas working with homeless, runaway, and throwaway youth. Fabian began a career as a program officer and recalled, “Staying focused on your goals might mean volunteering for an organization or cause you believe in and working as a server, as I did, or bending dreams by working in another job sector until financially you make your goals feasible.” She repeated that her theme, proactive dedication, will make your career goals attainable. Fabian appreciates her time in Latin America and the opportunities Ohio State provided her. “Living abroad exposed me to a perspective of disempowerment and marginalization that I didn’t know as a child growing up outside of Cleveland. However, confronting those challenges taught me that success, no matter how incremental, is possible. It is through strife that some children find the most creative resources to engender hope and good humor,” she said. |
