Great support, beautiful experience, wonderful locals!

This was a wonderful experience. At every point of the fellowship (and well after it ends), you feel that the Science Corps team are genuinely concerned about not just your well-being, but also your career prospects, hopes and plans as a budding scientist.

The two locations I worked in were both stunningly beautiful, the people were wonderfully kind and caring, I always felt safe, and got to enjoy and learn a lot about their rich cultures. The students are of course a highlight, providing inspiration and a constant realisation that you're having a positive impact, that you're in the right place doing the right thing.

...then there was swimming and diving in the outstanding Philippine sea, or hiking the peaceful trails of the Indian Himalayas... not bad at all...

One thing is important to keep in mind if you're considering Science Corps: this is NOT about teaching, it's about science. You will very likely be teaching a fair amount, but the primary goal is to raise scientific awareness and capacity, not just to cover a Chemistry or Biology class in a school. Put another way: if you feel that you love teaching science, but you don't really see yourself as a researcher in the long run, this is probably not for you. Science Corps fellows are expected to be career scientists who just take a 6-month break (typically before continuing on to a postdoc) to help raise scientific capacity in places that need it, hopefully inspiring a few children to become scientists along the way. This is why it's so important that you are committed not just to teaching science, but to science itself: your passion for science is the key thing that Science Corps wants you to bring to the host sites.

Your main task will be creating a lot of teaching materials, to help local educators teach science (or more broadly, STEM) once you've gone back home after completing your fellowship. It is extremely important that anything you create can be used without your supervision by teachers with very minimal science training, since the long-term goal of Science Corps is to build science capacity (again, not just to teach science). Science Corps will then arrange for the materials that you create to be shared online. Therefore, you have the potential to help a lot of students beyond those with whom you interact directly.

All in all, I recommend this fellowship without hesitation if you're serious and passionate about science itself, about communicating science, and about increasing equity in the access to science for all.