 Good evening, everyone. I'm thrilled to welcome you to this panel featuring amazing women that are connected to Fairfield University, both past and present, and who have served with the global community in profound and impactful ways. I want to first start by thanking the Office of Alumni Relations for hosting this event and for inviting us in the Center for Social Impact to partner with them on it. So my name is Melissa Kwan. I'm the director of the Center for Social Impact, and our mission is to connect the community and campus to create academic opportunities that address local, national and global challenges and develop individuals committed to creating a more just and equitable world. And the women that you will meet tonight really embody this mission. In 2019 and Julie Mugol who you'll meet next may correct some of my facts here, but I think it was in an early 2019 Fairfield University launched the Peace Corps program. In partnership with the Peace Corps to help prepare students for international development field work and potentially serving with the Peace Corps among other postgraduate service opportunities, including the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. So far we've had about eight students who have completed the program and 30 more that are currently enrolled. It's my honor. Really tonight my main role is to introduce our moderator Julie Mugol. So Julie is the associate director for humanitarian action, humanitarian action in the Center for Social Impact, where she facilitates co curricular humanitarian related activities and helps to manage the humanitarian action minor, as well as the Peace Corps program. She has 20 years of international development experience previously working at save the children where she held positions and development communications, as well as Asia operations based both in the United States headquarters and in Pakistan. She began her career in at the international organization for migration in Geneva, Switzerland where she held the positions of desk officer for Africa and the Middle East and project design trainer. She's the author of land without hats, a book which explores the difficulties faced by widows and the developing world and their courage and the face of adversity. I received a BA in politics and an MA in international relations, both from Syracuse University, and I'm honored to call her colleague and friend. So I'm going to pass it over to Julie. Thank you Melissa. Thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you to Janet and Jessica for this wonderful opportunity to moderate this panel in honor of the 50th anniversary of women at Fairfield University, which is quite a milestone. So 50 years of women at Fairfield. And tonight, I am thrilled to be sharing this space with four of those amazing women. And you are in for a real treat over the next hour as we hear the journeys, the career journeys of these women. So I have a couple of housekeeping points that I wanted to make first. If you have any questions, please pop them into the chat. So we'll be looking at, you know, the chat throughout. And if you are freshmen and are here for inspire credit, please stay for the survey at the end in order to get your credit. Okay, so those are our two housekeeping points. I just wanted to share a really nice quote is one of my favorite quotes. It's by Frederick Buckner, and it says vocation is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger me. And this is certainly the case for these women that I'm about to introduce tonight. So I wanted to kick off the session by first introducing Soraya Bilbao, who will start our panel so Soraya has three degrees from Syracuse University. She graduated in 94 as an undergraduate undergraduate and then received masters in 2003 and then in 2014. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific from 2005 to 2008. Ms. Bilbao taught English and worked with village youth to identify and implement community based projects. She extended her service a third year as a volunteer leader, and worked with Peace Corps Tonga staff to train volunteers. Ms. Bilbao now works as an English as a second language teacher at Danbury High School in Danbury Connecticut. Recently she was recognized as Danbury's 2020 teacher of the year. It was her Peace Corps experience that propelled her to obtain a master's degree with initial certification in TESL from Fairfield University. So I'm going to hand it over to Soraya. All right, everyone. Thank you so much. My name is Soraya Bilbao. And I was mentioned. I'm alumni from Fairfield University. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to have this opportunity to share a little bit of my experience with the Peace Corps. It was everyone who knows me can quote me and saying that it was one of the best decisions I've ever done in my life. And I'm always thrilled and excited to have the opportunity to share some of that. So today I just want to briefly talk about the decision for joining the Peace Corps, a little bit of the application process, what it was like a day in the life, and my experience coming back from overseas and how that changed my life. So the decision to join Peace Corps, honestly, I don't remember when I first heard about the Peace Corps. All I remember is that for a very long time I had wanted to join. However, I have to say a big factor preventing me from doing so was just the fear of being homesick and being away from my family for so long. However, it was something that I just knew I had to do. If not, I would continue regretting it. So I, and also I think my friends were getting tired of me of talking about the Peace Corps not doing it. So finally I said fine, fine, fine, I'll join. So I submitted the online application. And it took about, this was back, I received the invitation letter back in 2004. That's when around the time I had applied. So I think that for me the application process was between six to 10 months. And for the volunteers, it could go even a little longer than that. So it's not something that you could just do at the spur of the moment. From my experience, I submitted the online application. And there's a lot of clearances, there's a lot of interviews, and you get through all of that. And finally, the moment came when I went out one Saturday morning I remember and I got this letter and it was the invitation and my first thought was, where is Tonga? If they said welcome, you're invited to serve in the Peace Corps, you'll be serving in the Kingdom of Tonga. And I had no idea where that was. So I quickly looked it up in the map and I said, okay. So based on my experience with the application process, they'll try to match you with your previous experience. At that point, I didn't have any teaching experience, but I had volunteered a lot and I had worked in the community and nonprofit. So I had a lot of experience working with young people. So based on those factors, they try to match you. During the interview, they did ask me if I had any preference and my family is from South America, from Ecuador, and she had said because I spoke Spanish if I'd want to go to a Spanish-speaking country. And actually, I actually told her I'd go wherever they need me. So I said, however possible, I really wanted to challenge myself. So instead of possible, I'd like to go to a country where I didn't speak the language and it was a completely different culture. I really wanted to experience what it was like not knowing the language, not knowing the culture, and just go through all of that, really get the opportunity to experience that for myself. So I received the invitation. Now with the Peace Corps, not that you get the invitation and you go by yourself. What's really great, the way they do it is you get the invitation, then they send you more paperwork, suggest the packing list. And then you are, you head off first to what's called staging. And for me, it was staging in California and LA. And at that point, I met some of the other volunteers from all over the country, other trainees at the time, other individuals from all over the country who had also been invited to serve in that particular group. So with my experience, I went as a group to the country. So it's not like I flew down to the country by myself. And that was really good because you're very nervous and then you're meeting all these other individuals who are just as nervous and just as excited. So we had staging for two days, just overview some more paperwork. And then we flew into the Kingdom of Tonga, where we began an eight to 10 week orientation session. So even then we were considered trainees, not volunteers yet. And the training is extensive. So you're training with your group. And you, for a good part of that, you also have the opportunity to live with a host family. And Peace Corps does a really nice job with the training in terms of culture training, technical training, language training, safety and security. So they, so you feel as much as you can prepared to serve in the assigned village. At one point we do have to take a language proficiency oral exam. And then once you pass that then you're sworn in in country as a volunteer. And I was assigned to an outer island. That was about a half hour from the main island of Nukualofa. So the island where I lived was called on the island called Atata. And in the picture with the White House where you see that was actually the house where I lived for about two years. It was on the school campus, like a few feet from the water, no windows, no electricity, no running water. I mean the whole Peace Corps bit. I did have an outhouse. And at first you're like, how am I going to live this way? But then you realize, very quickly, you realize how easily you get back to basics and how much stuff we have here, you know, that we should be thankful for and I was. So by my two years living on that on the island, it just became home that was home for me. And I, during my two years on Atata, I taught English at the elementary of the government primary school. And I had, I didn't have previous teaching experience. So I did my best, but I did work a lot with young people. So I would teach English. I worked a lot helping the kids. We did a play. And then in the afternoons, I would work with the village youth on the island and in Tonga, a youth is considered someone who's not married. So you could be 50 years old and still be considered a youth in their culture. So on average, the youth that who I worked with were about 25, 26 years of age. And we did some recycling projects, youth leadership projects where we invited youth from other villages from other islands to come in and then they would go visit. So pretty much whatever the village needed, I tried to support them in any way I could. And in the evenings, I actually will spend time in what's called a phallic aloha, which is a little good store on the island. The island was very small. It was at most 100 people. There were no cars. It was dirt roads, paths, not even roads. It was like a dirt path. There were two bicycles. And so in the evenings, I would spend it with the female youth from the village in their little good store. And I do have to say one piece of advice for anyone who's interested or thinking of doing the peace course, definitely get involved with community life. I have to say sitting at that good store, I learned a lot of Tongan just because and I got to meet a lot of villagers, because everyone in the evening went to get coffee, you know, tea and sugar and flour so they got to see me and I got to meet them. So it was very busy. It was a very efficient community. So I had the opportunity to just experience that. Coming back home, I have to say the biggest challenge for me coming back home, I did extend a third year, as was noted, and my third year I was on the mainland and I taught English at a high school and helped at the Peace Corps office. Coming back home, the biggest challenge was pretty much the pace of life here in the States. When I went overseas, it was the reverse. It was getting used to not going at fast speed. They got to the point I didn't wear a watch anymore down there because everything is just a slower pace. After three years you pick that up and then when I came back it was very difficult driving on the highway for a while for me because I felt like people were flying. And the other thing that was challenging was going into the supermarket and seeing being overwhelmed at how much options we have just the aisle for cereal. So the next time go down the aisle and just really pay attention how many options we have in Tonga you were lucky you found one thing of cereal you grabbed it because it wasn't going to be there the next week. So you were lucky you got cereal or not. So, so I think the pace and the amount of options that we have here, we're getting used to that again was somewhat challenging. The biggest way that Peace Corps changed my life is that experience had a direct impact on my decision to come back and become an ESL teacher English as a second language. I had never considered teaching in a classroom at a school and having that opportunity in Peace Corps made me want to come back. I applied at Fairfield, got my TESOL certification, and I've been teaching at Danbury High School. And every day I have the opportunity now online distance learning but I had the opportunity to work with students from Central South America, you know, from other countries usually primarily Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers but my students come from all over the world and, and having had that experience being as a volunteer in another culture, learning that language and feeling the stresses of being in a different culture helps me consider and empathize and sympathize what my students might be going through. And so that was the biggest way that Peace Corps changed my life making my decision to change my career path, my professional career path and become a teacher. So it is the toughest job you'll ever love as it's as they say and again it was one of the best decisions that I've made in my life and I hope you all have the opportunity to to experience that as well. Oh, thank you, Soraya. I have so many questions but I'll hold back. And I know we have some questions also in the chat but I'll save those till the end so we can all, everyone can answer them. Okay. So next up is Emma Cannon. Emma, I remember Emma from when she was a freshman at Fairfield, you back in, I guess 2010s. Emma is graduating from Fairfield in 2014 and joined the Peace Corps in Guatemala from 2014 to 2016. After returning from Guatemala she worked in DC providing programmatic support to a Zika response program in Latin America and the Caribbean. These experiences led Emma to the field of nursing. She's currently working toward her nursing degree at the John Hopkins School of Nursing, where she continues to pursue her interest in global health, public health, and maternal and child health. So, Emma, let's hear about your journey. Thank you, Julie. And yes, I remember spending many, many hours and much of my Fairfield experience in that office and it meant a lot to me so thank you. So, why I decided to join the Peace Corps. Well, I would say I, I had a interest of passion and international development from the, you know, the little exposure I had had at the time I just kind of felt a poll. A global poll. And I, I felt that having that poll and to work globally, I really needed to experience living in different situations to really be able to work in different environments and, you know, growing up here in the States, I just really felt that that was what I needed to do. And I had the experience of studying abroad for a year while I was at Fairfield in Argentina. And just had a wonderful experience. And I was in an urban area at that time and I sort of said to myself, okay, you've gone and you live somewhere else in an urban area but what about a rural area. And that was something that I really wanted to do. I knew that I loved kind of that that piece of going somewhere new and learning about a new culture and meeting new people and I just felt that I really wanted to have that experience. And so I was at Fairfield at the time and I had done a lot of work in volunteering with the Jesuit University Humanitarian Action Network and I'd had the opportunity to listen to a lot of people who worked in international development and learn from them and get involved with, you know, fundraising initiatives and community outreach and involvement through the school. And I really felt that that had kind of led me to the decision and like Soraya was a little nervous that it was a little over two years. I had gone away for a year and that was fine but two years did seem a little daunting but I also just kind of pushed through that and I said, you know you need to do this now this is something you want to do and it's time. So, I applied. And I, at the time when I applied, I probably filled out a similar application to Soraya. The application changed since then, while I was a Peace Corps volunteer I, I saw that change. And so when I filled it out you just kind of wrote down everything you'd ever done in your life. And then they read it and they, you know, just sort of said, Okay, this is what we think that you're qualified to do and this is where we, you know we can send you to do it so I didn't know where in the world I was going to go and, and what was going to happen. And I just ended up being offered the chance to go to Guatemala. And I just think someone had had dropped off and decided not to go and it was very quick turnaround for me I think for a lot of people it takes a year or maybe even more than that and I applied in March, and I had a confirmation in June, and I left in October so it was very, very quick for me, but I really was appreciative of that I felt ready to go. So it was great. So as I said I served in Guatemala, which is a beautiful country of 32 volcanoes over 20 different languages, and just amazing micro climates there's beach there's mountains there's jungle I mean just everything it's it's such an incredible place. And so I, let's see I left in 2014 in the fall and I also you know had my staging experience in Florida took off and had a training experience. I was working in preventative health education. It was a very, very structured Peace Corps experience which I think is often not the case particularly with health, and a lot of places. Health work is very grassroots and sort of determined once a volunteer arrives and based on you know whatever a community identifies that they would like to work on in the health sector and in this case I was working with a by ministerial government program through it with the ministries of health and education called healthy schools and so we worked in rural primary schools and we supported teachers and sort of just really kind of building in more preventative health education lessons, and just kind of, you know, being a support community, bringing some like creative or different ideas, thinking about how to kind of format the last like lessons and make them engaging for students. So that was kind of the core piece of the work that I did. In addition to working in a local school district where I lived. I worked in a little bit in the in the state and so I got to kind of take bus rides all over the state and go to different communities and just need a lot of people and just work to support them and their efforts with this healthy schools program and I had so much fun doing that it was, it was really wonderful. And it gave you a day in the life. So a lot of the pictures, let me see. Most of the pictures you're seeing here are from my, my Peace Corps site, which is she got a call, and it is a Mayan village that is not too far outside of the second largest city in Guatemala which by second largest city I think I'm talking somewhere between like 200 and 400,000 people so not terribly large. And it is a beautiful, beautiful place, very much focused in agriculture. You can see in some of my photos, a very tall volcano in the background. And this erupting volcano that you see is actually just behind that very tall volcano so there were days that you just see the big smoke cloud building up or the ash cloud building up over Santa Maria which is the front volcano that you can see it was just, just really beautiful and just, yeah, just so, I don't know, just such a gorgeous gorgeous view every day looking up at the walls of this valley and this volcano. And flowers are also this, this is a site from a picture from near my site but there was a lot of, as I said agriculture but also flower flowers are grown in a lot of different places and sold in the market and where I lived they grew roses, which was kind of unique. So I had a rose garden in my backyard. And it was just a little farm they grew corn and they had goats and some different animals and we had a manure pit and we had some pigs and it was just yeah it was wonderful and I also I had the experience of living with two families actually and I lived with another wonderful family in a slightly more kind of urban setting and that was a wonderful experience too but this this valley is just such a beautiful place. And in terms of kind of what my, my day would look like I would wake up and you know I was a little sniffily a lot of the time because it was getting, it was cold I had cold mountain air all the time and I was in a cement block house with a tin roof and I would kind of get up and I'd go over to my little stove I had a little to to flame stove connected to a gas tank next to my bed and I just got up and I made my food and I bundled up and I jumped on a bus or took a walk or grab my bike or hopped in the back of a pickup truck. And I went to schools, or I met with people working in the Ministry of Health and Education that were supporting the schools. And I was always given an amazing snack because just food in Guatemala is delicious and everyone is extremely generous it's a very hospitable and generous culture and so I was always had something warm to drink whether it was a coffee or they make a lot of warm drinks called a toll which is kind of like a ground up starch it could be plantains it could be oatmeal number of different things and was always delicious and just so generous and so they always kept me warm and fat and happy and I appreciated that. And so then I kind of got to hang out at the school with the teachers with the kids. And we did a lot of different things lessons kind of little competitions and plays and different things and it was a lot of fun. And then in the evenings I would come home and maybe have another coffee and a snack with my host family. And yeah, I mean it was just it was a pretty was a slower pace for me. I definitely had a lot of work to do. But I found a lot of time to just kind of relax and enjoy and take in the beautiful scenery and all the people around me, which was really wonderful. And I have to say as well because this is event about women in the Peace Corps that I was surrounded by phenomenal women. I lived with a midwife at one point and got to spend time with her and her traditional sauna working with women that were pregnant or postpartum and be in there while she was seeing how they were doing washing their babies, giving them an herbal drink to settle their stomach. I played soccer with a number of amazing women I had was supervised by a number of different amazing women. So strong women were a huge, huge part of my experience in the Peace Corps, and probably part of the reason that I chose to be a nurse as well. And in terms of, I suppose, coming back. But I felt a little bit spoiled when I came back because I really only took a break of about a month and I immediately started working on a deep response program and everyone I worked with almost completely was in Latin American the Caribbean. I was in Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, many different countries. And so I was constantly, you know, on the computer talking to them supporting them. Very much still immersed in culture and the Spanish language, and that was an amazing experience too and I was also in DC, which is very international so I definitely had some, some shocks I mean certainly, you know, not to a US work schedule is different, kind of just reconnecting with people here too you know you've been away from your family and your friends for a few years and it takes time to also kind of reconnect with people and you have to, you know, give people the space to kind of let you slowly reintegrate into their lives so it's definitely a process. Because I also still have a foot in both places because I found my husband on a pickup soccer field down there. And so half of my family is in Guatemala now. And so I always go back and see my friends, and it's a big part of my life. So perhaps I would say I never really completely adjusted back. And I guess you know I would just say, I had some of the most amazing moments of my life, I had some of the hardest moments of my life, you know I experienced some loneliness. You know, from time to time and you know saying goodbye to everyone was really hard as well. I had amazing moments to climbing volcanoes and eating amazing food I played a lot of soccer. I love to throw myself onto soccer fields of all men and just prove to them that women can be awesome soccer players I also played soccer with a bunch of really amazing women who are really good soccer players but I still love to do that. And I just even the market I loved the market to. That was probably one of my best moments. My host mom sold her flowers in a market, and this was a market that was run by largely a group of my women that kind of organized and had their own spaces in the market. And they used to have so much fun when she would walk away she's have to go buy something or have to go talk to someone and she say okay you sell these flowers, don't sell them for any less than this amount. The faces of people seeing this just random gring a girl sitting there trying to sell flowers was really funny so I had some really wonderful moments I meet a lot of special friends who are close to my heart and just had an amazing experience and I definitely owe a lot of that to Fairfield for just kind of believing in me and letting me know that those opportunities were out there so thank you. Thank you so much I was wondering if you would mention your husband. If you didn't you know I was going to bring it up. Yes. Emma there's a quick question in the chat and it's actually from one of our students who went through the Peace Corps program. He's asking what ages did you teach. Oh sure so I worked in. It was mostly primary schools occasionally it was sort of like the preschool age when they were tacked on to the primary school but it would have been. Oh gosh. It would have been kind of like kindergarten to like sixth grade. Like a primary primary school. Great. Thank you so much. All right we're going to move on to our wonderful colleague Sylvia Marson Zachary who is an assistant professor of history and the Islamic world. She was a US Peace Corps volunteer from 89 to 92 and a pre service training director in Tunisia in 1994. As a volunteer she taught English language and literature at the teacher training college and faculty of letter letters in Seuss Tunisia. She received her BA from the University of Chicago. I didn't know that and her doctor from NYU in the joint program of modern Middle East studies and modern European history. Dr Marson Zachary's research focuses on state society relations colonialism, as well as the politics of post colonial memory and history writing Sylvia off to you. Okay. Thank you everybody. And thank you for inviting me to speak on this panel. I'm just going to go through we decided you know to talk about, you know, common topics and, you know, what made me want to join the Peace Corps, like Soraya. I come from a from Hispanic background, my parents and I am from Cuba. I'm an immigrant and a child of immigrants. And when I told my parents after in my junior year of college after they had sacrificed a lot to put me through a very, very prestigious school that I wanted to go overseas and volunteer and not take the usual, you know, the route of either being a doctor or a lawyer they had a heart attack. And so, you know, I said, what, what do you want to do there, you know, and for me, it was the belief that to whom much is given much is expected. I also, you know, there was a purely selfish reason to that I wanted to see the world and I didn't have the money to do, you know, to do that right. And I wanted to go as far away as possible to experience, you know, what it was like, what it might have been like also from my parents, you know, to come, you know, completely I mean I was too young I was eight years old but from my parents to, you know, to kind of understand their journey to. So initially, you know, it likes what I said, you know, it's that the motto is the toughest, the toughest job you'll, you'll ever love right, but in my case, it was the toughest job you'll ever love and will never have. That's what at least that's what I felt like because I initially joined. I worked for a year after I graduated to gain experience teaching so I was teaching at I was teaching ESL at a community college that got me experience to to apply. They initially offered me a job, a position in in Honduras. And I did not let you know like a lot of like, like, again, you know, I wanted to have a completely different experience and not I already speak Spanish. So I wanted to, you know, to be in a completely foreign environment. So they put me back into the drawing and I was selected to be one of the group that went that was going to the first group to go to China. In the Peace Corps. It was a very political position and situation. There was a lot of selecting selective processes. But the hardest thing I think for me was convincing my parents who had come from Cuba, that all of a sudden, you know, I had graduated from college in the United States and I was going to join the Peace Corps as a volunteer and not get really paid and go to China. They also had, you know, so I faced a lot of interrogations in the family, you know, are you sure you want to do this. So we were at a staging area in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. We put in 13 hours a day of language protocol, etc. As you can see from the pictures I never made it to China. Because I ended up in Tunisia. I left in 1989 and it was the year of Tiananmen Square. So the program got canceled in the middle. And Peace Corps in order to make up for that gave us the choice of going wherever possible, you know, wherever that they had an opening and I knew that if I went home, I would never probably leave. Considering, you know, how opposed they were for me to leave. And so I said, just put me on the next plane anywhere. Right. I really had from a very young age and interest in the Middle East. From the time that the King Tut exhibit came to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. I really wanted to see an Arab country. And so the first, the first assignment was in Tunisia. And it was teaching teachers or would be teachers. I'm like, I had just graduated. So these are my students back here on the bottom. So they were almost as old as I was. And so, you know, how to manage your persona and your, and your authority in the classroom was a really big deal of my Peace Corps experience. I was also evacuated during my time in the Peace Corps in Tunisia during the Gulf War. Like I said, it's the toughest job you'll let you'll you'll always love and never have right. And so I was evacuated in 1991 came back home for six months. And then I the Peace Corps needed people kind of as Goodwill ambassadors, because the entire group had left as Goodwill ambassadors to come back. And so I, I decided to add another year, and I came back. So I left in 1993, and then in 1994, they needed somebody to run the pre service training. Again, for, you know, cultural translation reasons. And so I, I worked as, as a, as a pre service trainer. So what you see here are images. So I'm going to take you to it through a day in the life of my first set of so my first journey. So what you see is my is my room I shared it in my apartment I shared it with another Peace Corps volunteer. This, this was my bedroom, and it overlooked. We weren't a very, I wanted to have the, you know, the traditional experience. So I went into the Medina. I, we got an apartment in the Medina, which was the old city and a lot of traffic of people every day from the morning from the minute that the sun rises until, you know, it sets. So we were above where the where the metal workers were living and trading. And so we, we rose up every day at 6am in that window to the sound of tapping the metal and Bob Marley singing so much trouble in the world and buffalo soldier. So I had those soundtracks like every morning Bob Marley and, and the tapping of the cobbler and everybody talking in the, and then the street sellers, you know, yelling for whatever wears that they were selling. So my retreat was this kitchen, which was not too far away from the bedroom because it was, you know, it was a very small place. So this was our little kitchen, and we had in here. So the only way we could get hot water, this was our hot water heater, which was our most prized possession there. Because although you think that it's very, you know, it's kind of desert like in many places and it's hot in the summers are unbearably hot, but in the winter, it's really cold. So lugging up our gas bottle, which was like a 50 pound weight up the stairs was one of the things that I remember going through every, you know, every so often. What you see here, so this is my second, this is not exactly my second house. This is from. So when I re upped in the third year, I lived in in the sixth floor apartment building. It was the only place that I could get. So this was my view overlooking that apartment building. So the trouble that I had with the gas bottle only complicated itself. When I lived six floors up. So this is the thing that I dreaded was the, you know, when the when the gas bottle runs out, right, my whole life was tied to the gas bottle. So these are the, these are some images. This is the street, one of the streets that we were that we live near. So you can see kind of the, the close quarters and you know the traffic. And every day that I went to school in the faculty of letters, I would have to pass by a whole, a whole street of sellers and they keep, and so they see you every day. And so it's inevitable that you're going to get the cat calling. Right. And so I, my, my favorite one was, there's my teacher as beautiful as a flower but she always wears the same jacket. You know, we learned to laugh after, after a while, navigating ourselves as women living alone in, in the public space was was a was a skill. Right. I'm not, I'm always smiling and so we were instructed, you know, don't, don't smile, look straight ahead, you've got that invisible veil, you know, unless you really want to engage in a conversation with someone, right. Well, when people actually knew you and knew that you were familiar face in there. That was not necessary at all. I mean, I was such a known quantity and that entire Medina that I would stop and speak to everybody. And, you know, would joke around and spend time it would take me a long time to go through my to my destination because everybody wanted to talk to me. And there was no sense of threat. After that point. The other thing that you get to see. And so I included the inevitable, you know, camel picture in here. Because one of the things that Peace Corps does offer you is the opportunity to travel. And I really took advantage of that. And as much as I could, you know, saving with the little money that they, you know, that you because you're at the kind of the minimum, the average wage, right. So I would save on every little thing I had, I, I, I almost put in here. A picture of one of my typical meals but but I decided not to. And this is when I went to Egypt finally. And it was kind of my dream come true. This was near the border with the Sudan, with the Sudan near the camel. So it's a, it's a camel festival and a trading of camels so I, I wrote on there and it was, it was, you know, the touristy thing to do. The picture here that you see are my students. And they spoke English just like I did. Honestly, I taught literature. I taught the novel. I mean, I was a, I was a behavioral sciences major in at the University of Chicago so I really had to learn you know when you talk about projecting authority. I, you know, I was right one step ahead of them, you know, we taught Lord of the Flies introduction to the short story composition. The classes could be as large as 200 students. This was one of my smaller classes. I had, you know, students kind of pulling in chairs from from other classes and it was a really a wonderful time of sharing. I think they taught me more than I ever taught them. And, you know, one of the things that you that I carry with me. And, you know, and kind of part of my my personal mission is to humanize the other. Particularly because there's so much misunderstanding in this country about this part of the world about Arabs about the Arab world about Muslims. And really for me it was, it was, it was an incredible experience. I'm not going to say it was always easy. Right. There were a lot of mental challenges, particularly because we were there in a time of war in the region. I think that supported Iraq, at least the Tunisian people did, but I never really felt threatened, although I could understand. I could understand the perspective of people on the ground with respect to the region. And it was really hard when I was evacuated back in the middle of the Gulf War Gulf War one 1991 to enter the space of United States kind of coverage of that war. It felt really, it felt like I was on another planet. You know, so you're, you are, you are exposed to the propaganda universe of one country and you enter the propaganda universe of another, even though we normally think that we have a free press right or a kind of a you really see that, you know, it's like that joke of, you know, two fish swimming in a pond and then you know they say, you know how's the water and he's like well what water, right. Because you really you swim in the water, you swim in a kind of water that you are not really aware of that you're swimming in a water and the Peace Corps experience really made me aware of that in ways that I cannot even describe to you. And I don't know what else you, I guess that's, that was the hardest thing for me to, to kind of adjust back, and it was adjusting back twice from from my Peace Corps experience. Yeah, that's about it. Thank you. I do remember that King Tut exhibit as well. I went to it. We're kind of giving hints at our age. That's okay. Moving on to Bridget Mulcarin. She's our most recent grad from Fairfield University on this panel. She is originally from New Jersey and graduated Fairfield in 2017. As a stag, she majored in international studies and minored in environmental studies and peace and justice. Whenever you thought about Bridget, you thought about the environment. She served with Peace Corps Senegal from 2018 until March 2020, when she was evacuated evacuated due to the pandemic. Currently she's living in Reno, Nevada where she is serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA and studying for her masters remotely as an international environmental policy student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Bridget over to you. Yep, the environment definitely got me hooked. Yeah, I was an environmental volunteer in the Peace Corps. So when Mimi decided to join the Peace Corps, I think it was studying abroad in Tanzania through Fairfield. Sitting abroad there really changed me entirely, honestly. And I know that sounds a little cheesy, but if you knew me before and you knew me after it was a different person. And also environmentally being exposed to the open landscapes, the beautiful mountains, I had the opportunity to go on safari, like it just really hooked me in. So any students that are here tonight, if you have the opportunity to study abroad, I would highly recommend it. And so after Tanzania, I pretty much knew I wanted to do the Peace Corps, so applying my senior year, I was not getting in. I think I had two or three interviews, two interviews before just getting denied. So I went to the AmeriCorps. I decided to do AmeriCorps instead as kind of a stepping stone and build some more skills. And I joined AmeriCorps and I was sent to San Jose, California. And I was an urban forestry non-profits volunteer coordinator. So I got to play in the dirt and play with the trees all day and talk to people and get them excited about it. And then when I ended up applying for Peace Corps again, I got in pretty quickly because they were like, we get it girl. We've seen your name a few too many times. So yeah, that process ended up being pretty quick. And if you look on the map here, I included a picture of Senegal. So you can see the north, it's called a Sahil environment. So the north is the Sahara Desert and then you start to move down into the more lush. I was luckily where that green dot or sorry, that red dot is in the lush green area. As an agroforestry volunteer, most people didn't want to be up north because you can't really grow trees in the desert too easily. So I definitely was lucky. But my region had not had an agroforestry volunteer or volunteers at all for about 20 years. Because you can see the Gambia River there. The Gambia has an interesting history when the English came in and they took their boats down. They took it as far as they could fit their boat and that's where they drew the Gambian border. That's where the Gambia is and they speak English there and a language called Mandinka, which is actually the language that I spoke. And although it is a national language of the Gambia, it was a very minority language of Senegal. So there was no bridge going over that river until last year. And so it was really hard here at the tip of Dakar. That's where the capital is. That's where you'll find a lot of resources, a lot of nonprofits work there. But to get down to that red dot there where I was and around Seju, you had to go around the Gambia because there was no way to get around the river or you had to take a boat down and then inward. So the area lacked a lot of resources. They were very, they have very, not a lot of food, not a lot of nonprofits working there. They were pretty much ignored. And so there was threats of a civil war to the west in Zigginshor and it kind of went all the way to Seju because it's in the Cosamans region. Well, it is the Cosamans region, but sorry, I don't know why I'm so good. And so they were going to secede from Senegal. And that's why there was no volunteers down there for about 20 years because of threats of volunteer safety. And so I was the first one in there. So although I was very far away from any other volunteers in any other regions, I had about four other volunteers that I was within 10 K of which was really rare. People were sometimes up to two hours away from other volunteers. So I had the opportunity to work with different volunteers in different sectors. And it was really rewarding in that way. So yeah, I was in Sitalba here and they speak Mandinka, as I mentioned, they said it was about 700 people, but a lot of people will move up north or go to Dakar or bigger cities to work. So it really only felt like ever 500 people about 300 maybe I don't know it felt it didn't feel very big. And then the city that was closest to me, Seju has about 24,000 people so it's a really tiny area. But it was really nice that within that region everyone spoke Mandinka because once I would try to take a bus up north, east or west I would be lost and alone and really working through my broken French to try to communicate that I had to find a bus somewhere. So in that way I was really interesting and really challenging to be that minority language and not be able to. I never really got the opportunity to have I feel like deep conversations people because it was just really challenging to get a handle on the language. And a lot of the other volunteers around me spoke French and they were also learning Mandinka's they were able to ask more questions in French, and things like that. So my day in the life was always changing because I was the first volunteer down there. It was a lot of people getting used to a foreigner living there. So that was a challenge, but also really rewarding because I got to kind of. I don't know be the first person that people knew so you know kind of break their expectations in a lot of ways which was cool and I'm they also you know my expectations change as well. I biked a lot I worked on a couple projects so mainly I did some tree nursery work teaching people how to mix oil build compost and get prepped for the rainy season the rainy season was only two months long and the rest of the year was about 110 degrees. So it was always always hot. And I would pull water and you know sometimes you get really discouraged because you just work so hard to pull water out of a well and it would be brown like what is happening. Always a challenge always hot but always fun I got became best friends with my bike because I just really enjoyed that time alone and it gave me time to think I found the exercise was a really awesome way for me to work through whatever was going on. I live with this host family here. So that's actually my American family, and my Senegalese family all together I was really lucky. When I was accepted to the Peace Corps I came home and told my family, and my mom's response was, Oh, John, we got to go to Africa. No, we don't. And they did they all came and it was really fun and really rewarding. And despite my dad is saying that he did not have to come. He really seemed to have the time of his life. I my parents never traveled I never really left the country until my experience at Fairfield so it was so awesome. You know, he was holding hands with my host dad because that's what men do there they hold hands and it was just like worlds colliding was, it was really awesome. And then that bowl next to that picture of my family is a really nice Senegalese wedding meal. That is kucha those like green blobs, or BSAF and okra. Like whip them up and it gets that like gelatinous kind of texture and usually that would be in the center and giant and it was mostly what I ate because I'm vegetarian and I've always hated fish, and they ate fish every single day. So it was that was also a challenge. I was often just eating plain white rice and going back to my room and being like it's hot and I am hungry for chocolate and peanut butter. But we made it I made it through. Definitely a learning experience and another project I worked on where I had a middle school club with a lot girls learn programs. Thank you Michelle Obama. And that was really fun and really rewarding and I got to work on that with another volunteer. And we had like the girls showed up every time and we're like how is it happening how are they all coming like this is crazy. They have so many other things to do because girls that have so many responsibilities like really feels like the men's and drink tea all day. But the girls like they work their butts off from the time they are so young and I'm just like oh my gosh. So that was that was a really awesome experience and to do it with another volunteer is awesome. Another project that I did was a master farm project which is like a sample farm to try to extend seeds to people. Since the region was so food insecure. And it's like one Hector and they show you improved practices and they should have trainings twice a year so I was lucky to get that done before I got evacuated by COVID which I forgot to mention. So yeah I was evacuated in March so I'd actually be leaving right now. But here I am. And yeah other products I worked on was trying to create low like cost be hives out of recycled materials because these are really great pollinators and they also are bringing in some income and they're also really good for people's health so it was kind of like what I thought would really be a like a perfect circle project basically unfortunately I didn't get to complete that project but I know some of my friends there are still be keeping so that's good. And lastly I will talk about my dog there. Her name is Si Si which means troublemaker, and she was my very best friend. She was just my buddy through everything. For some reason the second I got on the airplane I was like, it's time to get a dog. And I knew and she came running up to me one day and I took her in and, you know, Senegalese people really were confused by the fact that she could fetch a ball that she could sit that she could lay down when I asked her to but she would come when I called her and like all those types of things were fascinating and I love playing with her my host dad who hated dogs. She actually, despite getting fixed she ended up having puppies so she had two puppies and when my host dad like saw the puppies and and got to know them he was like next time she has puppies I want one. And so that was really like breakthrough for me because I was like, he knows that this can be a companion and it's not just something that needs to protect your fields from the monkeys and things like that. And that was really breakthrough because most of the dogs there have scars that she got kicked in the face all the time by people just randomly. So me kind of breaking down that very I think was honestly the biggest project that I did. And unfortunately she was on her way back here, but she passed away, she got sick, like the day she was supposed to fly home here so she would have been sitting right here but it didn't happen. It happened that way. But yeah, she's she's a great dog. And I think she lived a good life and our experience together is priceless apparently after I got evacuated she would stand at my door and like howl for me. Little babe. So yeah, since coming back. As mentioned before the cereal aisle I'm kind of still going through it. I went target last weekend and was like, Oh my God this place so many things. And where do they all go back to the environment. And so yeah but I also, when I was evacuated. I stayed at my grandparents house they were not there they have a second home in Florida where they are in the winter. So I got a couple of my Peace Corps friends actually I was like come quarantine with me, and they did. So we stayed there for about a month and so I was able to decompress sleep a lot, watch TV and not really think about anything. So that was nice. I've also been lucky that my best friend from study abroad my best friend from college my best friend from my AmeriCorps they all did Peace Corps so I have, and my boyfriend did Peace Corps too. And so yeah, I have an environment of Peace Corps one of my Peace Corps friends in Senegal mentioned he was like, we're ruined for the rest of our lives will always will always be only friends with people. He definitely just saying like the experience is very unique. I think the urgency to the environment is something that has changed since I came back that's why I'm sending environmental policy. We actually send a lot of our trash to Senegal, and it's a coastal nation very low income. And so they can't manage it. We started sending it to low income countries Senegal being one of them. And so that was definitely something I was like, we need to stop this is so bad. And another one is that most of the women in my village they farmed rice on the cause of months river. And with salt intrusion the soil is getting really bad and the salt was coming from the ocean as the sea level is rising and so this is just very urgent to me. And the reason that, yeah, it's changed me so far and it just makes me want to work harder for the global community. Yeah, thanks for everyone I really enjoyed hearing everyone else's stories as well it's so great to, you know, see the different places and no Peace Corps is alike even within the same country so it's really cool to hear about all different places in the world. We have a quick question for you from the panel from the audience, would you return to Senegal or another agriculture sector in a few years to finish up. Um, so yeah, I would do Peace Corps again, because it would be starting from scratch it wouldn't be me being able to skip the training process or learning a new language so definitely be challenging. But it is not something that I'm totally against. I was able to spend a year and a half there so in some sense I feel like I got a lot of time in but in others you know I feel like seeing my friends in their last couple months really made me want to have that experience because in those last few months before you leave it seems like they were like really taking everything in and I wish that I had that so it's not off the table I don't know when but potentially. Great. I'm really conscious of the time so I wanted to ask and it's probably not fair but I have one quick round robin question for each of you. And you'd have to answer it in one sentence or two. All right you're ready. What did you notice or learn about your inner strength. You want to start us off Soraya. I guess pretty much that I can overcome challenges. Even at times where you think that you mean you don't have the inner strength but you power through and you realize that you can. We'll go in river we'll go in the same order so so no we minute Emma came next. I would say you just I think when things were hard for me I just kind of turned inward and I had to work some things out and you you have some difficult nights and you have some difficult days and you dig deep and you know I think you work it out within yourself and you also seek the bonds that you've made in the community to fulfill that and to kind of just foster more of that inner strength as well. So yeah inner strength. The next thing for me as far as the inner strength was the second time that I came that I that I went because there were a lot less Peace Corps volunteers so there were a lot less I was really alone. In many ways we're about 10 of us in the entire country so I could calculate that I could be 15 hours by myself without you know seeing anybody but the winters were just we're just horrible. And you had you really do as Emma said you dig deep. You have your reserves of strength. You find the strength either you know you you you read you you have a conversations with other people who are authors who. You know who who can share their world with you right you're reading as part of a of a companionship as well so I really found that as well. It was tough. And Bridget inner strength. Yeah I think I've never been challenged so much in my life. So I think it's just you know that you get up the next day and you go back out and you try again no matter how much people tell you your language is horrible even though you should know it by now where you miss someone's last name because instead of I don't want to teach you by like putting it in your face that you're wrong and then you're supposed to like, you know, kind of get that fight back. But I never got that. So it was really hard but yeah just knowing that you did it yesterday you can do it again tomorrow you take it day by day. Thank you so much for sharing your fascinating inspiring amazing stories. Thank you. Thank you very much to all of you. I do have a quick survey so if you are here as a freshman for your fwe credit please just fill in that survey for all of our students on the call. And then I just wanted to put in a quick plug for our programs in the center for social impact. So here we are with our current students at the UN when the UN was opened right. So in the center we have something called the Peace Corps program which is a new program so Bridget and Emma you wouldn't have known about this I don't think no because it just started a baby two years ago. So, and I did notice that we have some people on the call who went through our Peace Corps program, and one person on the call who was waiting to go out into the field so Carly is with us on the call as well so I hope she enjoyed the same to the journeys and hopefully she'll get out into the Peace Corps field very soon. We have 15 students enrolled from the class of 2021. And last year we gave out eight certificates or we didn't get out a certificate the Peace Corps issued a certificate to our students last year. And then in 2019 we had six students receive Peace Corps certificates. We have 35 students in the pipeline. Oh, I was just I was just reading out the quote in the in the chat so someone wants to know a little bit more about the Peace Corps program that's great. So, and we are one of the few Jesuit universities who we might be the only Jesuit university who offers this program so it's really been such a wonderful program. And the Center for social impact co runs it with international programs and it was really a need a deep Carlin's brain child so we really do need to thank him for getting that to Fairfield University. So we have a number of pathways that students can follow to do international and to do humanitarian action work. Emma was one of our humanitarian action fellows, a June Hon fellow so she, she helped us to run our student club for a couple of years. And we do have a humanitarian action minor that we have at the university which is one of the few in the country that runs a program for undergrad so it's really a unique program to Fairfield University. We have our student club we have lots of student leadership opportunities that students can sign up for to do humanitarian action. And we try to raise awareness and integrate ethical, political and historical context into development and humanitarian action. So, that's who we are and for any students on the line we would be more than happy to provide you with more information on any of those programs. And once again, I would like to thank you know the Alumni Office for putting this together for us and Jessica Janet in honor of the 50th anniversary of women at Fairfield and we really kicked it off well tonight with four very strong amazing women so thank you so much to all of you for sharing your journeys, and it was so nice to see you.