Kayla Bicol
- Class
- 2012
- Major
Whenever I stay in the Philippines, I'm introduced as a "balikbayan," a Tagalog word meaning someone or something that will return to where they came from. In my case, I always return to the U.S., but one day, I hope I will be returning to the Philippines instead. My name is Kayla Bicol and I am a Filipino student living in iHouse.
I've been to the Philippines several times before, but I think this summer of 2009 has been the most memorable experience for me. For two months, I studied Tagalog grammar and vocabulary on my own so that I would finally be able to have a conversation with my relatives here. I kept up with the local news and I learned more about the culture and values of a Filipino. It's different when a person grows up in the U.S. and then returns to the country of their parents. I'm understanding more about myself and my parents' "ugali," or upbringing, more and more each day.
In addition to learning Tagalog and Filipino culture, I have been preparing for a project that will take place in Cebu, Philippines late August 2009. I am a member of the Southeast Asian Leadership Network's (SEALNet) Project Philippines 2009. Our project is centered on the prevention and elimination of gastrointestinal worms in elementary students. We will be working with University of the Philippines (UP) High School students to teach Barangay Alaska's elementary students about worms and how to prevent them. We will also be holding leadership workshops with the UP high school students to show them what they are capable of doing as they become the next generation of leaders in the Philippines.
I decided to apply and participate in SEALNet's Project Philippines because of their focus on developing student leaders by doing service projects with much poorer communities than their own. This project is also an opportunity for me to experience firsthand the implementation of an international development project in the Philippines because some time in the near future, I would like to implement my own project there.
My future project is still a bunch of jumbled ideas, but its focus area will be on education. In high school, I wasn't so concerned with politics and world news. It wasn't until I arrived at MIT that I realized that there's a lot of things I could've learned by just watching and reading the news. I believe that keeping up with the news and being aware of what's going on in the world is a very important part of our lives; although, it can be a difficult thing to do daily. I would like to develop a project that would involve a current events course in a school's curriculum because knowing world events would have a huge impact on a student's worldview. Someday, I would like to implement this project in the Philippines.