2011 Scholarship Entry #70: Hailey Bedford

One of the greatest hardships out world faces today is a lack of equal access to formal education globally. While most citizens of Canada and other first world countries have easy and equal access to the formal education system, this is not the case in many other countries around the world. According to data gathered by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, approximately 67 million primary school aged children worldwide did not attend school in 2009. Of these children more than 4.5 million of these children were located in sub-Saharan Africa. As a future teacher these statistics make me worry about what kind of future our world will have if so many children continue to receive no formal education. Many of these children never learn to read or write beyond the most basic level.

Currently I am enrolled in my final year of Education at the University of Alberta. Becoming an elementary school teacher is just my first step in helping to solve this problem. I plan on graduating with a major in elementary education and a minor in English as a Second Language. This minor allows me to not only work with young immigrant children in the Alberta education system but I also plan on volunteering to work with immigrant and refugee families teaching both English and basic reading writing and math skills. However this is not my overall goal for my life. One of my major life goals is to eventually go overseas and volunteer to teach in countries that are desperate for teachers. While I know I will not be able to afford to do this right away in my life, I am determined to accomplishing this goal within my lifetime as I believe education is one of the few solutions to many of the problems that our world faces.

I have already taken my first steps to setting my plan in motion. Last summer (2010) I traveled to Fiji to live in a locale village for a week, spending my days volunteering at a local school doing renovations and teaching. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life and truly made me want to make a difference in this world. The people there had very little and yet were some of the most amazing people I have ever met. If I can make a difference in just one child's life and give them an education they would otherwise not have received then I can say I made a difference in the world. I may not be able to change the world on my own, but I plan on helping change it.