Meet ARCC Students
Adventures Cross-Country students join us from across the United States and overseas. With personalities as diverse as their backgrounds, the tie that binds these young people together is enthusiasm. ARCC students are eager to engage their world. Encouraged by their leaders and shaped by their remarkable experiences, ARCC students discover their potential as agents of change. Below you'll meet three incredible alumni who found themselves inspired by their ARCC trips and are now inspiring others.
Katie Pilot - Backpacks to African Schools
Hometown: Mill Valley, CA
High School: Tamalpais High School
Age: 17
Favorite ARCC Memory: To this day I still can't believe I had the opportunity to dress in traditional Masai clothing. Each person from the group got pulled into a small hut where the women inside dressed us in traditional fabric, jewelry, and footwear. It was so fun coming out of the huts and seeing the rest of the group all dressed up! I have traveled a lot since my trip to Tanzania, but it still is by far the best trip I have ever taken!
How has your ARCC experience affected you?
While participating in the ARCC Africa Service Adventure, we had the opportunity to work in the schools. After spending a few days with the students it became very evident that their situation is dire. Pencils, pens, notebooks and backpacks are all scarcities. It became my mission, my dream to bring these kids school supplies. When I returned home I started Back2Back, a non-profit which organizes the donation of school supplies and backpacks for needy schools all over the world. This past summer I had the chance to travel to Rwanda and brought school supplies to the orphanages and kids I worked with. It was very exciting! Today, I am continuing my dream by extending my surplus of donations to any organization that is traveling to a foreign country to work in the local schools.
QUOTE: "After my ARCC trip I started Back2Back, a non-profit which organizes the donation of school supplies and backpacks for needy schools all over the world."
Dana Mayber - Teddy Bears to Thailand
Hometown: Deerfield, IL
High School: Deerfield High School
Age: 18
Favorite ARCC memory: Playing soccer with the Thai children at Moo Baan Dek
How has your ARCC experience affected you?
Sawadeekah! That means "hi" in Thai. I guess that's how it all started. While spending a month on ARCC's Thailand Service Adventure, I was able to travel from the high hill tribe villages to 60 feet below the water's surface on remote islands and learned that Thailand is truly the "land of smiles". As I worked with orphaned children, renovated classrooms in local schools, and taught English to Thai students, I realized that what I was giving them paled in comparison to what I learned from the Thai people. They seemed to have so little but actually had so much to give. That's why I decided to expand a local charity that I had started and give globally.
"Bear Hugs" started in 2008, when I sent teddy bears and scholarship money to a camp for children with cancer in Wisconsin. After my ARCC trip, I decided that even though Thailand was already the land of smiles, the children could all use a teddy bear to cuddle. I also realized while teaching English that even though the children were all eager to learn, it was difficult because they did not have the proper materials. This summer I was able to send 200 teddy bears, school supplies, toys and dental supplies to the various places I visited throughout Thailand. Through Bear Hugs I am now raising money to build an orphanage and school in order to provide support and independence to children in an underprivileged country. Bear Hugs is also providing stuffed animals to various disadvantaged areas across the world including villages in Nicaragua and Peru, as well as pediatric oncology patients at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. We are also partnering with Heartland Alliance in Chicago to provide Beanie Babies to promote good health to children in an inner city pediatric clinic. As I learned in Thailand, a smile is truly a universal language!
QUOTE: "This summer I was able send 200 teddy bears, school supplies, toys and dental supplies to the various places I visited throughout Thailand."
Taylor Francis - Honored in Tanzania
Hometown: Menlo Park, CA
High School: Crystal Springs Uplands School
Age: 17
Favorite ARCC memory: My trip to Africa was life-changing; it is hard to choose a favorite memory! Highlights included building a soccer field and painting a school; seeing giraffes, elephants, lions and cheetahs on safari in the Ngorongo Crater; and staying in a village with a Masai warrior, his 20 wives, 100 kids and 1,000 cows.
How has your ARCC experience affected you?
The people I met in Tembo - the students like Amir and Tatu, and the teachers Mr. Dafa and Mr. Peter - were happier and more fulfilled than most people I know in America. Meeting them taught me that happiness is not dependent on material things, but on relationships with people. Though we were with each other for only a week, we formed relationships that will last a lifetime.
I am lucky that my experience with ARCC in Africa outlasted the 28 days in Tanzania. Mr. Peter, the schoolteacher that we worked with, became one of my dearest friends. I have never met anyone who is so genuine and compassionate, and he and I still text message every week. Eight months after I met him, he and his beautiful wife, Vaileth, had a son. They named him Francis, after me. It was one of the proudest days of my life, and I cannot wait to travel back to Tanzania to meet him.
QUOTE: "This experience taught me that happiness is not dependent on material things, but on relationships with people"