The HOAP trip taught me valuable lessons about selfevaluation; it is often said that these types of trips—dubbed “service-learning” at their best and “voluntourism” at their worst—are as much for the benefit of privileged Americans as for the intended recipients of our efforts. From my time at GDS and in college to my summers spent working in DC to my Peace Corps service, I examine my efforts to “make the world a better place” through this very lens. The conclusion I have come to is that the lessons taught through the HOAP program—selflessness, cultural awareness, mutual respect, and understanding—are as much a fulfillment of GDS’s mission statement as they are an opportunity to see the world through the lives of others. - Satchel Kaplan Allen ’09 Peace Corps, English teacher in Costa Rica
The trip impacted my life then because it opened my eyes to a lot of things that were happening in an area of the world that I did not know much about. I had heard statistics and was aware that poverty was a serious and devastating problem, but it never truly hit home until I witnessed the poverty with my own eyes, and bonded with children who were unsure of where their next meal would come from. I gained a personal interest in the wellbeing of people in need; they were no longer just numbers, they had names, faces, and stories. - Mike Klain ’12 Sophomore at Harvard University Has returned twice since his trip in 2011 and will return again this summer.
I went on the HOAP trip in 2005 (as well as the pilot trip for LearnServeEthiopia, a precursor to HOAP, in 2004). I have so many fond memories of HOAP, but a few stand out: returning to Project Mercy in Butajira in 2005 to see students I remembered from my previous visit—and having them remember me; visiting a nearby market with students from the school and meeting members of their families; watching Bobby, C.A., and students from GDS and Project Mercy play soccer until the sun went down. . . . I think that it is impossible not to be permanently marked by the experience of going to a place that feels so different and far away during a very formative stage of life. As a teenager, one’s outlook is inevitably narrow, and I feel extraordinarily grateful to have had the opportunity to realize at that moment just how much world there was beyond school and home. - Julia Halperin ’07 Journalist
GEORGETOWN DAYS SPRING 2014
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