Finding a niche in the community has been the passion of high school senior Kaitlyn Fitzgerald, who has created opportunities for ASU students to teach English to Sudanese refugees.
Fitzgerald, a senior at Seton Catholic Preparatory High School, founded the “English as a Second Language” program at the AZ Lost Boys Center about a year ago when she was 16.
The center was founded eight years ago specifically for young boys who came from Sudan fleeing the horrific civil war.
The struggle for natural resources and political power in Sudan between the mainly Arabic North and largely Christian and tribal South has led to the displacement of 4 million Southerners, according to globalsecurity.org.
The high school senior oversees college students who have gotten involved in the program, she said.
Fitzgerald said she tries to present herself in a professional way.
“I haven’t encountered any problems,” she said.
Even though the center has provided immigration services, scholarships, job training and other resources, it did not offer formally organized English language classes until Fitzgerald got involved last year.
She said she developed the ESL curriculum for her Wednesday and Saturday classes using resources from the Internet and professors at ASU.
Even though balancing school and volunteer work is difficult, she said the refugees at the center keep her coming back.
“They are the happiest, most positive people I have ever met,” Fitzgerald said.
However, she said teaching is challenging.
“They are illiterate in their own language,” she said. “So they have to learn how to learn.”
Fitzgerald said she’s had a general interest in African culture and was familiar with the Sudanese civil war for a long time but was inspired to volunteer at the center after the Lost Boys’ program manager, Jany Deng, came to speak at her school.
She hopes to attend ASU next year if she receives the Flinn Scholarship and plans to major in global studies.
A year ago, the center changed its mission to serve members of the entire Sudanese refugee community, said Kuol Awan, the executive director of the center.
The young boys who came to the United States following the brutality of the civil war that orphaned many of them are now young men in their 20s and early 30s, Awan said.
Abdelmalk Adamn, 62, a refugee from Darfur, a region in Sudan, and one of Fitzgerald’s students, said he has been in the United States for five years.
He left Darfur because of the violent civil war that is now in its 23rd year. Two of his brothers died in the war during 2003.
He comes regularly to Fitzgerald’s program and said a year ago he could not read or write. Adamn is now in the intermediate level of the program and working on grammar.
“My teacher is very, very good,” he said.
Awan said he was impressed with Fitzgerald because in his experience young volunteers are very enthusiastic at first but tend to lose interest in their endeavors as time passes.
“She is still the way she was on day one,” he said.
Eventually, Fitzgerald hopes to transition into an administrative position because she is going to college, and she hopes the other volunteers, including ASU students, will take a more prominent role.
Laura Medjimorec, an ASU ESL graduate student, started volunteering with the program in August.
She said the program has been applicable to her course work because she hopes to teach English to immigrants after she graduates.
“It’s very rewarding because the students are very motivated,” Medjimorec said.
Carla Rascon, an ASU psychology senior and volunteer at the center, said she hopes that learning English will help the refugees move past their traumatic experiences and become more fully integrated in American culture.
“This could be one of the stepping stones in overcoming what they have gone through,” Rascon said.
Reach the reporter at mary.shinn@asu.edu
