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INSIDE ARCHIVE


Marketing and
University Communication
UW-Green Bay, CL 815
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E-mail: matzken@uwgb.edu

Rev. May 13, 2008

 

Social worker, traveler, realist, she connects to Ecuadorians

After graduating in 2005 with a degree in social work, Theresa Okokon chose to take the road less traveled. Instead of applying for a full-time job like most of her classmates, she signed on as a Peace Corps volunteer.

“I wanted to open my eyes to what else was out there, experience life from a different direction, find out what I was made of, and find out what the world was made of,” she says.

Okokon has been in Ecuador since last June and will remain there until September of 2009 — a total of 27 months. She spends most of her time in an inner-city community called Calle Ocho working with Mujeres del Lucha (Women of the Struggle), a group organized to fight problems related to poverty, machoism, teen pregnancy, family violence and hunger. She has thus far helped expand the “Adopt-a-Child for Lunch” program, and she teaches English, art, and hip-hop dance classes while helping with workshops on sewing, HIV-AIDS prevention, sex education, self esteem and life skills. She is both optimist and realist.

“I don’t believe in changing the world,” Okokon says. “Making even small changes that stick can be difficult. I do believe, though, that those small changes really do help people.”


Click here to download a PDF file of the entire May 2008 issue of Inside magazine.