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By Isabel K., YES Abroad 2013-2014 Türkiye

The ways in which these programs impact participants are innumerable. I can only really speak from my experience. Spending those 9 months in Türkiye altered my brain chemistry in a way no other single period in my life has. It changed the way I listen, the way I ask questions, implicit biases and assumptions I held.

In the time since my year in Türkiye I have received a Bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology from Barnard College, a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia, and I am currently in my first year of law school at the University of New Mexico. I received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Turkish from the U.S. Department of Education while at Columbia, and I currently volunteer as a Turkish interpreter for a legal services organization in San Diego that assists people in ICE detention, all as a direct result of my YES Abroad year in Türkiye.

How I approach my fields, and how I envision my career, has also developed as a direct result of my time on YES Abroad. I am rooted in a sense that I am part of a much larger, interconnected, and interdependent world. Having people I call family in Jordan, where my YES program host sister is from, and Türkiye leads me to view world events through a lens I simply would not have had prior to the program. I continue to seek out international opportunities, but also to focus on what I see as my responsibility, as a U.S. citizen, to build a more just, tolerant, equitable, and respectful society in our own country, so we can, hopefully, engage with the international community in a way that reflects that.

The impact is also deeply personal. I have now been to Türkiye six times and Jordan four times. I have shared some of the most joyous and challenging moments of my life with the families I obtained through YES Abroad and they have come to know me, and me them, intimately and preciously. YES Abroad taught me to find home and community wherever I may be in the world. Going abroad at such a young age requires you to trust people you have never met, in a completely foreign cultural context, to care for all of your needs. And they do. This is an invaluable asset and one that allows me to move through life with a sense that I can always find my place and my people. It turns every stranger into a potential friend and family member, which makes it a lot harder to view those people with distrust or judgment, or to excuse injustices against them. And that is, I believe, the greatest accomplishment of these programs.

I also want to acknowledge that these programs extend an opportunity to students who may not be able to pay for traditional exchange programs, such as myself, and the importance of this cannot be overemphasized. They allow the world to see the myriad of people and backgrounds that make up the U.S. population. I feel immense gratitude to the United States Congress and the U.S Department of State for ensuring that students have the opportunity to experience their own version of what I did. Being a part of the U.S. global exchange alumni community is truly one of my greatest honors.