Information to open doors

The difficult part of my town is that it’s one of the least developed regions in the country and, as I said overwhelmingly ignored by the leaders.  People here simply don’t know what’s going on in other places, and they certainly don’t know of opportunities elsewhere.  Last year was the first year any girl from this town even heard of GLOW camp, while more developed cities have had attendees five years prior. 

Similarly there are many studying opportunities and scholarships abroad but to take part in these opportunities one has to know they exist.  This is where I come in.  I figure there may not be a chance for a lot of students from my school to be able to reach the level of leaving the country but if they at least knew about what’s out there they could try and perhaps in a few years more and more students will work harder.  My goal was simply to encourage the students.  I feel that sometimes people walk around and live their lives here never knowing what could be, and never try for anything better. 

The FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) program is a US Government run program that brings students from former Soviet countries to the US to study in high school and live with a family for one year.  There’s an English exam that students must pass but they certainly don’t need to be fluent to be invited, it’s more important that they are able to work well with others and display leadership potential.  This is earliest of programs but an organization called IREX offers many other opportunities to nationals that range from university, graduate and teaching exchange programs.  Each year about 45 students from Azerbaijan enter the FLEX program but practically half of them come from Baku (which is as developed as most other European cities) and the rest come from other more developed cities.  No one from Zerdab has ever entered the FLEX program and I don’t think I’d be far off to guess that less than 1% have studied outside the country.  In general the majority of the people here will never leave the country and most of them rarely even leave these town.  You get the picture. 

Alumni FLEX students are forever changed and grow in ways that would never be possible otherwise.  If you were to meet an FLEX student after they studied in the US you would swear they were American, right down to their dress, their accents, their “likes” and “shut ups!”  They’ve gotten to experience all there is to being a teenager in America.  As much as some of us might never want to relive adolescence, there are so many things that teenagers here really miss out on.

I recently coordinated with the members of Young Vision (a group composed of Alumni of FLEX and other graduate programs) to come to Zerdab and speak to the students. I was nervous that no one would show up or that those who would cause a ruckus but we had a good turn out from my school as well as another school in town. They spoke (in Azerbaijani) about their experiences in America, what the test is like, how to steadily convince your parents to let you go and answered a variety of questions. Some teachers even sat in and asked questions to learn a little more about the educational differences. Overall I think they were fascinated and the session even ran close to 3 hours when we had only planned on an hour and half to 2 hours.  All the kids seemed to be really interested and even some of the 5th formers were asking if they could take the test this year.  Unfortunately they'll have to wait until the 8th form but that just means they have even more time to prepare.  I was so glad to get them motivated and excited to keep working hard. 

I tell myself that the first step is awareness. Now that some of the younger generation are more informed about what’s out there they can begin to work towards a higher goal.  If nothing else it will give them a better perspective and something to ponder.  I considered it one small success and was glad to bring more information into my small village-like town.