FLEX Workshop 2008

This week I had the pleasure of hanging out with 112 of our FLEX students in D.C. For those of you who don’t know, I work with an exchange program called FLEX that is funded by the Department of State. Usually I work with grants and write newsletters, but this week I got to evaluate our Civic Education workshop for students who competed and won an essay contest. We picked 112 of our 1200 students to come to D.C. this week and learn about democracy and civil society firsthand. It was fantastic. FLEX students are from all of the former Soviet republics- from Ukraine and Russia to Armenia and Georgia and on over to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They’re going to high schools in the U.S. for one year and this week they represented 38 different states. Pretty exciting. I think they were surprised at how different the states they’re living in are. Some were staying Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Wisconsin, Maine, Alabama, Florida- even South Dakota.


















Anyway, the week was awesome. They arrived on Sunday and through the week we visited every memorial and museum Washington has to offer. We even got a sneak peak at the new Newseum- a museum all about the history of journalism. They got to hear a panel about the importance of a free press and made their own news broadcasts.


It wasn’t all fun and games, though. Students got together in country groups to talk about projects that they wanted to implement in their home countries when they return in June. FLEX alumni are very active. They volunteer all over the place. They work in nursing homes, visit orphanages, teach English classes, work as OSCE election monitors, lead community events, start recycling campaigns, work with American embassy officers, sponsor AIDS runs, clean up parks, and get elected to office. I think the most encouraging and exciting thing I got to do this week was listen to their ideas of how they are going to change their countries for the better when they return. Unlike many exchange students who come to America, most FLEX students do not want to move here. They want to go home and change their countries. And that is awesome.






















For some of them, with relatively free countries, this might be as simple as having an event to promote national language in culture. For some of the less free countries, I heard ideas of creating a democracy forums online. They want to have weekly computer classes for orphans who are about to turn 18 so that they have good job prospects when they get out. They want to clean up city squares. They want to have Special Olympics. They want to do all sots of amazing things. It was awesome. And I am so proud of them.














Besides hearing them talk about how their lives have been changed during this week and this year, I think the best thing I gained this week is that I now have friends to stay with in 12 different countries. :0) Sometime soon I want to wear cheshki with my friends from Turkmenistan; I want to go to a Georgian dance; I want to go to a café in L’viv. Soon.