What is your favorite travel memory?
I have a mind and soul full of treasured memories from my times with VISIONS. One of my favorite memories is of a cultural exchange night we had one evening in Myanmar.
Together with the students at our monastic school home, we enjoyed an evening of delicious food and cultural displays of dance, music, and other talents. The school students and VISIONS participants worked so hard to prepare food, displays, and performances for each other, and we all became a lot closer because of this extraordinary evening.
How have you changed/grown since working for your current company?
Working with VISIONS has strengthened my bond with our global community. It has given me the gift of improved confidence and valuable communication abilities, as well as countless other skills honed at various worksites and activities.
My role as a summer staffer has provided me with the extraordinary opportunity to work for something deeply meaningful to me and so many others, and to learn about our vast and beautiful world by experiencing it first-hand.
What is the best story you've heard from a return student?
One of the participants I met on a middle school program went on to experience several different VISIONS adventures. After returning home one summer, he and two of his VISIONS friends started their own organization to raise money to go towards building a school in their VISIONS host community.
Together with their community partner, they have been very successful in their endeavors, and seeing photos of the school being built from the ground up has made me an extremely proud VISIONS leader. These participants had the initiative to work together with a community even after their program had wrapped up, and this global partnership has resulted in something spectacular.
VISIONS can profoundly affect youth and their sense of global citizenship, and lead to concrete changes in our world that will shine on for generations to come.
What makes your company unique? When were you especially proud of your team?
VISIONS is unique in its holistic approach to learning. We are not only working on service projects on programs. We are not only going on exciting adventures and participating in cultural events and activities. We are not only learning about ourselves and those around us. We are engaging in a blend of these teaching tools, and through them, we are becoming better people and better citizens of the world.
I am always so proud of the work VISIONS does when I see young people discovering things about themselves and making goals. I have seen our community friends making goals and working towards them, and I have seen VISIONS participants realize what their calling is.
On one program, a participant decided to start a scholarship fund and began work on it that very day. VISIONS changes people's hearts and minds, and for that I am proud.
What do you believe to be the biggest factor in being a successful company?
Successful companies need to be driven by people. From the get-go, it has been clear to me that VISIONS gets its fuel from the people and the communities it works with, and the people who have been so positively affected by its work. That was the spark that began VISIONS, and what continues to drive it into the future.
