UW among top college contributors to Peace Corps volunteers

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Peace Corps volunteer and UW grad Kayla King (right) is currently serving in Ukraine.




Courtesy Photo


The Peace Corps recently announced that the UW ranks as the second largest source of college volunteers to their organization, just behind the University of Wisconsin-Madison.This comes after the 2016 ranking of the state of Washington as the third greatest contributor of volunteers, with the Seattle Metropolitan Area ranked sixth.
Established by President John F. Kennedy through an executive order March 1, 1961, the Peace Corps provides aid to the international community in the areas of social and economic development, while simultaneously promoting intercultural understanding between Americans and other nations.Kayla King, who graduated from the UW in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood and family studies, now volunteers for the Peace Corps. “Immersing myself into another culture and thus breaking the ‘American bubble’ has always been paramount to me in order to understand people around the world and the Peace Corps gave me the opportunity to challenge myself in the most direct way possible,” King said in an email.She is currently stationed in central Ukraine and assigned as a TEFL Volunteer (teaching English as a foreign language) at an honors school called Gymnasium, where she works with students in grades 4-11 every week. The primary goal is for students to learn not only the English language, but also American culture.“Mainly to convince them that Americans do not solely subsist on pizza, hamburgers, and hotdogs,” King said. She has also held other volunteer positions in Ukraine, as was the case last summer when she planned and directed a gender equality camp called Girls Leading Our World, or GLOW, which involved young girls in discussions revolving around tolerance, multiculturalism, HIV/AIDS, and human trafficking. According to King, the project was successful both in promoting these values and teaching the girls leadership and teamwork ...


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