Idaho alumna raising money to repaint education in Republic of Georgia
The decrepit building is from the early 1900s and looks more like a prison than a school. Blank walls are worn and falling down, some windows are still intact, while others have been replaced with boards. Paint is peeling off a building that was on fire years ago — its walls disintegrating, rotten floorboards sagging.
“Those schools are so gloomy, it’s like teaching in a prison,” University of Idaho alumna Haley Egan said.
On her first day as a teacher at an elementary school, Egan said she thought she had the wrong building. However, there was one room that offered solace — the room in which Egan taught Georgian children English.
Egan is a third-generation Vandal from Boise with degrees in environmental science and Spanish. She graduated May 2014 and went to the Republic of Georgia to teach English during the fall 2014. She begins graduate school this fall at Oregon State University, and will study environmental and social justice ethics.
Egan said her classroom in the Republic of Georgia school was the only classroom with a whiteboard she saw during her four-month stay. The children she taught, even though their surroundings were poor, were always excited to learn.
Egan’s interest in education and developing nations began in high school. She wanted to improve her Spanish, so her teachers put her in contact with an Ecuadorian pen pal. When Egan came to UI, she said she learned about a research opportunity in the same Ecuadorian town where her pen pal lived.
“I was like, ‘Well, I have to go,'” Egan said.
The project she worked on during her internship was genetic research on the Andean bear, which Egan continued to study throughout her years at UI, eventually writing her senior thesis. Yet, it wasn’t the Andean bear that stuck with Egan.
“The science was cool,” Egan said. “But I realized I was more interested in the human issues. Mostly, I was interested in education.”
Egan said it didn’t seem fair how people in Ecuador didn’t have the same access to education she had. When she studied abroad in Peru, Egan saw many of the same issues. Because she was born in the U.S., Egan got an education she took for granted for most of her life, she said.
“There were many, many people that desired an American education and just couldn’t get it,” Egan said. “It made me feel so selfish and undeserving.”
She said her epiphany changed everything, and Egan realized she wanted to spend her life trying to improve education in developing countries.
Haley Egan | Courtesy
Haley Egan with the 9th grade class in Georgia.
The interest in Europe came from some UI classes in which she learned of countries trying to gain membership to the European Union, but had yet to be accepted. Georgia was one of those countries. She said a friend later told her about program in which students could travel to Georgia to teach English.
“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go to Georgia. That sounds great,'” Egan said. “So I pulled out my laptop … and started applying.”
The program Egan participated in focused on bringing Western ideas to rural schools in Georgia. The English teachers in Georgia know grammar rules, but don’t know how to speak English well, Egan said. She said the children knew all the rules, but couldn’t answer basic questions.
Egan was supposed to return this spring to teach more, but she said a problem with her Visa forced her to stay stateside.
“That’s when I started thinking about what more I could do for the schools,” Egan said.
Through a website called Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform, Egan is raising money to fund a trip back to Georgia. The goal she set to raise is $1,500, even though she said she hopes for twice the asking amount. She just passed her goal and has $1,578. Egan still hopes to raise more money by the end of her program March 4.
Egan is more interested in having a large number of backers. She said if 100 people each donate $1, Kickstarter would notice the large number of backers and help promote the project.
“The smallest amount really does help,” Egan said.
The funds would go toward supplies for Egan and another teacher to travel to different schools and paint murals to inspire school children and teachers to continue prioritizing education. She said she wants to use art, because in Georgia she found art was an effective way to communicate with the children.
Egan’s parents asked her why she wanted to go to another country to improve their lives when there were plenty of things wrong with education in Idaho. Egan said while people or politicians in the U.S. choose to have a bad education, people in other countries don’t have a choice.
“We’re all connected,” Egan said. “Even though there are 7,000 miles between us, we are still connected and we’re all human.”
Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected]