Lauren Hasday's Experience in Bogota!

University of Michigan graduate, Lauren Hasday, tells us about her experience living in Bogota and her unbelievable work. She was a very active member of Will Work For Food while she was at Michigan and is continuing her community service in Bogota. We sent her some questions and she was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer them for us. They are below:

1) Who you are, what you are all about, how did you get involved with WILL WORK FOR FOOD, what you do for the organization, anything else cool that you do outside of WWFF?

I just graduated from U-M in April with a degree in Psychology, History and Women’s Studies. I’m originally from Long Island, but I’m living in Bogota, Colombia for the year teaching English, travelling and learning Spanish. I got involved with Will Work for Food my junior year because my friend told me about it and it sounded really interested. I’m really into social responsibility and giving back to the community so I thought WWFF had a really great philosophy reaching out to our local community and the world at large. I started out as a Regional Manager organizing and maintaining relationships with reps from other colleges in the US. I moved on my senior year to be a member of the marketing team helping with some publicity and website stuff and the larger U-M events.

2) What are you currently doing/working on for WWFF?

Right now since I graduated I am just doing some volunteering, I am teaching English to wounded soldiers on an army and a navy battalion in Bogota. We are teaching them English as a marketable skill that could help them get a job in the future. We teach basic conversation and vocabulary that will be useful in their day-to-day lives. It’s a pretty good experience because many of the men I am teaching haven’t had very much formal education and it’s cool to see their progress week-to-week. I immediately thought of WWFF when I got started so I asked Steve if I could get it sponsored so that I could stay connected to the club because I really enjoyed working for WWFF in school.

3) A top five list of a category such as "Favorite Things About Fall," "Favorite Things About Halloween," "Places I'd Like To Visit," "Favorite TV Shows," or any other category that you can think of.

Top Five Places I’d Like to Visit: 1. Cairo 2. Santorini 3. Budapest 4. Jerusalem 5. Abu Dhabi

Lauren, thanks so much for telling us about your experience in Bogota.  We love to hear about the good work our WWFF members are doing around the world!