Alumni Update – Aigerim Birimzhanova (Kazakhstan)
Hello! My name is Aigerim, and I am a Global UGRAD alumna from Kazakhstan. After the program I was so eager to share all the experience I gained in the United States, and I did! Thanks to my practice at school, I had the opportunity to tell more students about the number of great things the English language can bring into their lives! I see that there are more and more students interested in participating in foreign projects and programs, and that warms my heart.
However, I really wanted to make something bigger, something that can affect people’s lives even more. Lockdown, working from home, and procrastination didn’t really help with ideas for interesting projects. The excuses were endless. And right at that moment I received an email from the National Alumni Network about the upcoming Online Team Building.
Eventually, thoughts turned into actions, I found like-minded people, created a team with other alumni: Diana Alpysbaeva (Global UGRAD 2019-2020), Alfiya Kurmanalieva (Global UGRAD 2018-2019), Aiza Margulani (Global UGRAD 2019-2020), and Azaliya Utebayeva (Global UGRAD 2019-2020), gave it a name, and now we are participating in Online Team Building. We want to create a social-charitable project that provides humanitarian assistance to people who have become even more vulnerable now; to charitable foundations, hospices and animal shelters, organizing the assemblage of goods (clothing, food, books, toys, everything that is good enough to be reused, and clothing that is not suitable for reusing will go to the winterization of animal shelters).
The possibilities are endless! Being a part of our exchange programs has made us fully aware of this and we want to share our experience with others.
Aigerim Birimzhanova, Kazakhstan, Global UGRAD 2019-2020, Lewis-Clark State College