… About me and this year…

I, Kimberlee Frances Walker would consider myself a fairly average 20 year old.

I grew up in Stouffville, Ontario.  I am half way through studying Peace and Conflict Resolution as well as Drama at the University of Waterloo.  I love my family. I also love to play intramural hockey, read, teach peace at camp, be with my friends, pet my cats, and eat rainbow sherbet.

This year, however, I am doing something slightly less ordinary.

Very, very, very (yikes!) soon I will be travelling to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where I will be volunteering with a program run by Mennonite Central Committee.  This program is one year long and is called SALT, which stands for Serving And Learning Together. There are a whole bunch of us SALTERs going all around the world for a year, serving in over a hundred different types of job postings. Exciting, yes?

I know to some it might seem a little strange to skip off to Bolivia when I’m only done second year. However, I believe that there are many ways to learn about the world other than school, and much as I adore university, I know it will still be here when I come back!  The structural inequality in our world drives me absolutely crazy, and I have been struggling for some time now with what exactly loving our neighbours not just with word or tongue, but with action and in truth looks like. So this year, knowing that I have no answers and am certainly not going to ‘fix’ anything, I seek to learn about life, love, peace, international development and faith from my global neighbours. I want to learn to serve, not doing great things, but small things with great love.

I might be biased, but I think my job sounds pretty amazing.

I will be working at a place in Santa Cruz called Talita Cumi Children’s Home. I am pretty stoked about it because, quite honestly, being around kids of all ages makes me happy as a clam. I know though, that it won’t all be a walk in the park. Talita Cumi is a place for orphaned, abandoned and abused kids to live together, and I am expecting to be stretched considerably as I figure out how to best use my skills and abilities to be a positive impact in these young people’s lives. Prayer for this would be appreciated.   You can find out more about this special place on their website,  www.talitacumi.org .

The purposes of this blog, are therefore threefold

-          To keep my many supporters, friends and family up to date on my joys, struggles, thoughts and dreams as I live and work so far away from home.  (This way, when we chat on skype or msn, we will know where to start and won’t have to go through “how is bolivia”, “great”, etc. before we get to the good stuff.)

-          To let the PACS (Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies) administration at UW know that I am indeed thinking analytically about the things that I experience during my time of service, and that I am relating my experiences to my studies.

-          To reassure my mother on a semi-frequent basis that yes, I am still alive.

So, thats about it! If you do perchance happen to read these thoughts sometimes, please comment!

It will make me feel connected to the world.

Love,

Kimberlee