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News
Only 10 days until we embark for Guatemala! Elizabeth Miller and Neil Richer are excited to be leading the “Youth and Resilience” Guatemala SST this year, accompanied by their two daughters.
Hillary Harder and Micah Detweiler will lead the summer 2026 SST unit in Ecuador.
by Mike McHugh Welcome to this year’s SST blog for the Environmental Disaster and Response with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) May term course. This year we will be traveling to Lahaina, Hawai’i to work with MDS to build homes that…
On Wednesday, everyone returned to Quito, and we were reunited! It was a joy to spend four precious days together sharing stories from service, laughing and singing together, and processing who we want to be when we return home. The…
I’m stationed in the town of Latacunga for service, and am working with an organization called Pastoral Social Cáritas. One of the projects that the organization is working on is a farm in San Pablo, which is about a 25-minute…
One Friday while my host mom was traveling, my host relatives Bethany, Paulina, and Tito took care of me. We explored their town, Guano, including playing at a park and going to a bakery. We went out again at night…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Kupang is home for three…
At the foundation, “Su cambio por el cambio,” I work with elderly people in the mornings. I enjoy playing games, leading activities, and learning about their lives every day. The majority of the elderly who go to the foundation live…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Three of our students flew…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. One of our SSTers stayed…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Salatiga is a small, compact…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Semarang is a coastal city…
This photo depicts my host sister Areli interacting with the owner of a small market close to my host family’s house in Puyo. My host family often has me take their electric moped to this store in the evenings to…
I freely admit that I’m nuts about birds. In Ecuador, I’ve been carrying my binoculars with me everywhere to search for birds in each hedge, telephone wire, and garden. My sincerest apologies to my fellow SSTers who are likely fed…
At the end of week 2, we began our trips to visit students in their service assignments. This week took us north of Quito to Imbabura province to visit Ray and Izzy in Ibarra and Micah and Alina in Otavalo.…
In preparation to leave for their service assignments last week, the students discussed what “service” means. Rather than thinking of this service period as work, they defined it as: the opportunity to be part of something larger in Ecuador giving…
At our farewell party on Friday, host families, teachers, language buddies, university administrators, coordinators and friends of the Indonesia SST program gathered at UKDW for a program put together by our amazing students. The students sang, played guess-who games, and…
We shifted into this transition week by celebrating Lunar New Year, Lent, and the start of Ramadan. It felt fitting that so many people in Yogyakarta are marking a transition into a new season while our SSTers begin their preparations…
Our last group hurrah during Study Term was visiting Borobudur Temple at sunrise. We woke up at 4:00 am, climbed a small hill to a lookout point, and were rewarded with this view: We toured the exquisite, ancient Buddhist temple,…
It is a bittersweet weekend as we said goodbye to our Quito host families and each other and ventured off to our service placements. Our study portion in Quito culminated with a despedida (farewell) fiesta on Friday to thank our…
This week our Indonesia SSTers were broken up into 4 groups and given a topic and location to investigate. The assignment was designed to build independent research skills and dive deeper into one of our four Study Term themes: Indonesian…
We’re experiencing lots of fun and smiles during our final week in Quito! Today, Gaby taught us how to salsa dance. There were lots of laughs as we loosened up, flung our arms, twirled our hips, and spun to the…
As we enter the final week of our study portion of the term, it is amazing to reflect on all of the sights and experiences Ecuador has offered us so far: from hummingbird sanctuaries in the cloud forest to participating…
Since our arrival at the beginning of January, the whole group has been taking gamelan lessons each week with Pak Sigit and a team of capable (and patient!) instructors. The students each chose one of the many percussion instruments that…
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