Carrie Daut '09: homeward bound
Carrie Daut ’09 has always loved going abroad, seeing the sights, and meeting new people. When she learned of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos program after graduation, it seemed like a match made in heaven. Or Guatemala.
The Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos is an international program that assists high-risk children in nine different countries throughout Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. The program provides food, water, shelter and educational opportunities to thousands of children who would usually have little to no opportunities at all.
Starting Daut’s freshman year, she wrote for the DoG Street Journal. She also wrote for student publications from her high school years. Despite her love for journalism and publishing, she pursued a major in economics.
After graduation, Daut applied to the Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos program, or NPH, and was later accepted as a home correspondent. Seven months after graduation, January 2010, Carrie was heading to Guatemala to serve a 13-month commitment to the program. As a volunteer she was assigned a section of 20 girls between the ages of 12 and 15.
Over Carrie’s 13-month stay the volunteers and their girls spent a great deal of time together from activities that range from the mundane, such as eating meals together, to organizing holiday activities like Semana Santa for Christmas.
“I’ve become really close with all those girls,” says Daut.
Daut, as a home correspondent, was also able to exercise her love of writing and publishing. Home correspondents are responsible focusing on the children, and they also write articles about the children of the program, as well as the NPH program itself.
Daut says that the more information and pictures home correspondents provide the more information can go into NPH websites, newsletters, gala events, and other awareness raising or fundraising pursuits.
As an example, Daut reports on a project called the Nine Home Correspondents. Each correspondent wrote a feature story about a teenager in the NPH who wanted to go to college. Later, Daut discovered that the feature article she wrote convinced someone to sponsor the teenager she had written about throughout her entire college career. Quite a good outcome from a simple article.
But now that January 2011 approaches, Daut is making preparations for returning to the United States. Her 13-month commitment will be officially over, and she will not be reapplying for another stay.
Despite Carrie’s sadness over her departure, she is already looking to the future. She says that once she gets back home she will be looking for writing and publishing jobs in the general industry, but would one day work for the NPH again.
