Recently, Somerset-Berkley Regional High School Sophomore Micaela Rennick was researching the Peace Corps for her online Advanced Placement Human Geography course, which led her to discover Global Leadership Adventures (GLA).  GLA is part of Terra Education, a certified B-Corporation (benefit corporation that provides a positive impact on society, workers, and the environment) that has summer programs which send high school students to a variety of locations throughout the world including countries in Africa, Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, and South America to serve developing communities.  Micaela would like to participate in GLA’s Thailand: Cultural Kaleidoscope Program this summer from 2 August to 15 August.  The program includes thirty hours of working at a school to teach children English and playing games to get to know them better, and a whole day interacting with the elephants who are poached for the ivory trade and learn how they are a central aspect of the Thai culture.  Other activities include a Thai cooking class, Thai boxing, zip lining, and learning about how Buddhism impacts Thai society.  However, the program’s tuition costs $3,399, flights to Thailand cost well over $1,300, and she would need to pay additional money to get a passport and vaccinations.  Micaela has two older brothers who are currently in college so her family cannot afford to pay for the trip.  Instead, Micaela has resolved to raise all of the money on her own.

Micaela states that when she first learned about Global Leadership Adventures, she “knew immediately that this was something I really wanted to do, and my heart started beating really fast.”  Although she is uncertain about a career at present, Micaela says she has been thinking about being “an environmental engineer and going to developing countries such as Thailand where they don’t have good clean water sources, so I would help develop them which would increase their health, decrease the mortality rate, and allow for more economic development and increased prosperity.”  Choosing Thailand out of all the places that GLA offers was a tough decision, Micaela admits.  Her final few choices had come down to Ghana, Costa Rica, Belize, and Thailand.  However, she does not like swimming, and in Costa Rica and Belize, the volunteers go in the water every day.  Her decision between Thailand and Ghana was resolved during a World Language Club meeting (an after-school club in Somerset-Berkley Regional High School in which students learn about cultures from around the world). “I got chosen to do research on the Thai culture,” says Micaela, “and so I took that as a sign.”

Micaela has been doing a lot to get her mission out there.  Her mother runs The Healthy Way store in Somerset, Massachusetts so she has a poster and a bucket set up there.  She also has posters set up around town in other small businesses.  Micaela has been using Facebook and Twitter, and her mother has been using Instagram to promote her goal.  Furthermore, Micaela’s eighth grade history teacher has been working with the Community Service Club at Somerset Middle School to give publicity to her cause.  She has also been featured in an article in The Spectator, written by George Austin.  Micaela says that her biggest supporter has been her mother because “she’s been very helpful and so optimistic.  When I’ve been too nervous to say something, she’ll call people and spread the word.”  She also states that her friends have been very helpful and supportive of her efforts, and even helped her make crochet elephants that she is giving to people who donate $50 or more on her Go Fund Me site (www.gofundme.com/meszt2ck).  Micaela admits that most people assume that her project is something similar to a fun vacation, but she states that her trip to Thailand is “so much more than that.”

So far, Micaela has raised $550 on her Go Fund Me account.  Outside of that, she has received $40 from her mother’s store and her friend’s little brother has given her all the money he had saved.  Micaela thanks her donors because she would never be able to go without their help.  “It is my dream,” she says.  Micaela is looking forward to everything about the trip, and she hopes that she will be able to reach her goal for collecting the money before all of the slots are taken up, the deadline for funding being 31 May 2016.  Going on the trip next year would not be ideal, however, because Micaela is going to be taking a lot of Advanced Placement courses at the high school that give a lot of summer work and the trip would most likely not be able to fit into her schedule because of her commitment to her school and church.

Micaela is mostly looking forward to working with the orphans and the school children to help them teach English because, especially in developing countries, it is “refreshing to see children who are so happy to see you because they show up to school and do not even know if they will have a teacher that day, whereas kids in the United States often times complain about their education.”  She realizes that the technology, school, and healthcare she has is but a dream to people in Thailand and other developing countries.  Micaela says that she wants to make those dreams of the Thai people more of a reality, “even if it’s just a little.”