Global Engagement

Mar 25 2023

As our second week of visits to service locations concluded, students and leaders came to the realization that this chapter of SST is quickly drawing to a close.  The end of SST always brings a mixture of emotions; sadness, joy,...

Mar 21 2023

This past week we set out on our cherished SST tradition of visits to students at their service locations.  Our first stop was to visit our students in the cloud forest and Amazonian rainforest locations on the west and east...

Mar 20 2023

Thursday March 16 & Friday March 17 We left Shirati on Thursday morning and made a quick run to the border so that our family could extend our visas for another 90 days…. the 30 minutes in Kenya was a...

Mar 15 2023

I have to admit, I was nervous. As I stood by the medical center in the crisp morning air and watched students continue to file out of a charter bus, my pulse increased. I was tasked to act as a...

Mar 13 2023

Monday March 13, 2023 Today we drove from Musoma to Nyayero to visit Irving Matute who is teaching at Nyayero Secondary School. We arrived in time to see the remaining 20 minutes of his English teaching lesson. Wow, he is...

Mar 12 2023

Sunday March 12 Our silence on the blog has been noticeable perhaps! We have let the students settle into their service placements and now we are about to launch our service tour to visit each of them. We will leave...

Mar 12 2023

Blog: Week 1 of Service Isa H. On our way to our service town in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest, Lisa and I weren’t quite sure what to expect. With nervous stomachs and bladders, we sat on the bus for about...

Feb 28 2023

Our final week of the study portion of SST was an eventful one.   It began with the widely celebrated Ecuadorian national holiday of Carnaval. This pre-lenten four-day party involves getting soaking wet and covered in foam in many parts of...

Feb 20 2023

This past week we set out on a journey south through the Ecuadorian Andes to discover more of this stunning landscape and the people who inhabit it.  As we wound our way around incomprehensibly deep gorges, steep mountain passes, and...

Feb 19 2023

Sunday Feb. 19, 2023 This week marks our last week in Dar es Salaam before we head through the Serengeti toward our service locations. On Monday Feb. 20th we will leave on the night train from Dar to go to...

Feb 13 2023

As the current SST’ers celebrated the one-month anniversary of their SST adventure, they experienced the unique sights, sounds, and smells of an open-air market, helped prepare a traditional Ecuadorian meal, learned some Latin dance, spent time with refugees hearing their...

Feb 08 2023

Wed. February 8th, 2023 Sunday included attendance at church in the morning followed by a quick lunch so we could get to the national stadium for an international friendly between Simba – one of the premier TZ professional club teams...

Feb 05 2023

As students continue their march through the SST experience, encounters with new landscapes, new cultures, and new sensory experiences pound out their steady drum beat each day…..  One of the true challenges of SST is to fully absorb the daily...

Feb 04 2023

Saturday Feb. 4, 2023 This week we have continued to explore various components of life in Dar. Thursday afternoon we met with Dr. Shreya Shah from Regency Medical Center who gave a presentation linking healthcare challenges with environmental attributes. For...

Feb 01 2023

Wednesday Feb 1, 2023 The students just left our apartment in Upanga to head home after a good discussion of the week’s events. We have been exploring the colonial history of Tanzania and the independence movement championed by Tanzania’s first...

Jan 30 2023

As we reflect on this past week, it is hard to absorb all we saw and experienced in the last seven days.  The SST experience continued its daily sensory buffet of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and the unique feel of...

Jan 29 2023

Sunday Jan. 29, 2023 We spent this weekend in Bagamoyo, a town about a 90 minute drive north of Dar es Salaam also directly on the Indian Ocean. The town is much smaller than Dar, but was the setting of...

Jan 26 2023

Thursday Jan. 26th Wow, the last few days have been a flurry of activity! Tuesday and Thursday we visited the University of Dar es Salaam for our last two history lectures: the first on the Swahili Civilization and the second...

Jan 23 2023

Monday Jan 23, 2023 Swahili class continues each morning at the church in Upanga. Today started with singing then proceeded to focus on telling time in Swahili. Students practiced converting English time to Swahili time, as 7:00 a.m. in the...

Jan 22 2023

The first week of the study portion of SST continued the daily immersion of new sights, sounds, and experiences that began in orientation last week.  The contrast between SST and many other international exchange programs is that after each day...

Jan 17 2023

Tuesday Jan. 17, 2023 Monday morning the students trickled in to the church from their various homes for the first Swahili class. This was significant for several reasons. It was the first time they traveled from their home to town...

Jan 15 2023

SST in Ecuador is once again in full swing and for those who have experienced it firsthand, the first few days are a whirlwind of activity; a fire hydrant blast to the face of new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and...

Jan 15 2023

Sunday Jan. 15th The pictures say it all – today was a big day for students and their host families, as they met one another for the first time and began a 5-week chapter in their lives that will never...

Jan 14 2023

Saturday Jan 14th, 2023 The last two days have been filled with various orientation activities and settling in, while  students stay at the YMCA in downtown Dar es Salaam. Friday morning was all business: exchanging money, getting SIM cards for...