Volunteering begins! Mentors International

Yup. This is the place. Fourteen bright adults in a beginner's English class, where I serve as comic relief.

The volunteer work begins! A friend of a friend of a client of mine connected me with Mentors International, which works in Africa (Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi), Asia (Cambodia, Nepal, and the Philippines), and Latin America (Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru), Founded in 1990 and based in Kaysville, Utah, Mentors International is “one of the largest mentoring organizations dedicated to transforming generational poverty into sustainable self-reliance.”

Monica Cardoso, country director, outside the office

The Cape Verdean operation has ten staff (looking for two more) and 100+ adult students in classes for beginning and intermediate English, entrepreneurship, Microsoft Suite, and customer service.

I’ll be spending a few hours a week with the beginning English class, mostly as comic relief for the dedicated regular instructor. She teaches about conjugation, auxiliary, infinitive, and interrogative, and other stuff I know nothing about except intuitively. (How do BEGINNING English students even know these words? except that they do.) I’ll help the students practice their spoken and written English, with my trademark zany questions and ideas.

You’ll hear lots more about Mentors Int’l and my clever adult students in the weeks to come, but for now, let’s just say I’m smitten. These guys are terrific.

Thanks for walking with me, friend.

-Marci

(PS - new to this free substack? Read the backstory of this epic adventure here.)