Student plans Marshallese outreach

By Madeline Sims, The Dartmouth Staff

Published on Tuesday, March 30, 2010

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After spending the Winter term in the Marshall Islands on the Dartmouth education department’s volunteer teacher program, Derek Summerville ’11 launched an effort to bring a group of highly-motivated students from the Marshall Islands to the YMCA Youth Conference on National Affairs this summer. If he is able to raise the necessary funds to bring nine high school seniors from Marshall Islands High School to the United States, Summerville plans to take them on a two-week program to visit Dartmouth, New York City and Washington, D.C. before they participate in this year’s YMCA Youth Conference on National Affairs in Black Mountain, N.C., he said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

Summerville, who previously participated in the YMCA conference, said he has long hoped to bring international students to the session.

“International policy is discussed at the conference, and I’ve always felt there should be an ambassador delegation each year to present international proposals and add another perspective,” he said.

Summerville said he also plans to bring the students to Dartmouth for three days to allow them to meet with the College’s education department and use the available resources to perform research on a foreign policy issue of their choice between the Marshall Islands and the United States.

This Winter, Summerville taught comparative government to 12th graders in the Marshall Islands through the education department’s volunteer teacher program. He modeled his curriculum after the YMCA Youth in Government program, which enables U.S. students to act as members of a mock government at their respective state capitals each year, he said.

After almost 10 weeks of classroom preparation, 44 Marshall Island High School students convened for the 1st Annual Youth Nitijela session, a day-long model government meeting run by Summerville at which students presented and debated critical issues such as domestic violence, sex education, fitness and school truancy. Over 100 people attended, including several leading members of the Nitijela, the official legislature of the Marshall Islands, Summerville said.

Marshall Islands Senator Tony de Brum praised the work of Summerville and his students in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.

“The session was a wonderful celebration of youth and of education,” he wrote. “In over 40 years of public service, I thought it was the smartest, the most sincere and the most enlightening Marshallese Parliament session I have witnessed.”

De Brum said he hopes Summerville will raise enough funds to allow the students to participate in the upcoming YMCA conference.

Dartmouth education professor Andrew Garrod, who has led the College’s volunteer teacher program in the Marshall Islands since 1999, said that the students’ “remarkable persistence and resilience” at the Nitijela conference demonstrated that they are prepared to attend the YMCA conference.

“They listened to each other very carefully in a culture where people are very hesitant to talk on an individual basis,” he said. “They questioned the various bill proposals in a forceful and intelligent way and were completely engaged in the project.”

He added that the participation of female students was significant, because girls in the Marshall Islands are often hesitant to speak up about political issues.

Of the 44 students who participated in the Youth Nitijela session, Summerville said he chose nine students to participate in the YMCA conference. He described them as “active, aspiring individuals.”

“They’re people who could definitely be involved in the government in the future and truly give back to their country,” he said.

It is also crucial to expose the students to a campus like Dartmouth’s, Garrod said.

“Fifty percent of the teaching force there only has grade 12 [education], and their grade 12 is our grade seven,” he said.

Garrod also stressed the importance of showing the students “the many doors” education can open.

“They will be the future leaders of their country, and the more they understand about the possibilities of how education can alter and create an improved world, the better for them and the better for the Marshall Islands,” he said. “I want them to go back recharged and inspired to go to a university, get a good degree and contribute back to society.”

Summerville said his greatest challenge will be to raise enough funds to bring the students and two adult advisors to the United States.

“The main obstacle to this happening is simply paying for the flights, which run about $1,600 to $2,000 per round-trip ticket,” he said.

Although Summerville said he hopes he will be able to receive some funding from the Marshall Islands government, he also anticipates he will need to rely on donations and grants. All such donations will go through Youth Bridge Global, a nonprofit organization that Garrod co-founded.

Summerville said that one of the major goals of his initiative is to show students that they have the knowledge and capability to bring about positive change by teaching them about governmental processes and how to develop and defend their ideas.

“The goal was to get students to realize that the power to change things doesn’t come from being in power — it comes from having the power to stand up for yourself and voice your opinion,” he said.

Benjamin Kahn ’11, one of nine Dartmouth students who taught in the Marshall Islands this Winter, said Summerville’s Youth Nitijela program gave the students a unique chance to believe they could bring about positive change for the Marshall Islands.

“It boosted their confidence in public speaking and showed that they could handle the type of debate and critical thinking necessary for becoming a leading public servant,” he said. “Most of all, I think that the program drastically increased their awareness of societal issues and imbued them with a new sense of responsibility as the newest generation that must fight those problems.”