Interview with Kelly Parshall, Class of 2010

by Chace Blackburn, ’18 

 

I was lucky enough to talk with Kelly Parshall (Periclean Alumni from the class of 2010) last Thursday. I spoke to her experience in Periclean Scholars, her winter term trip to Ghana, her semester in Dar Es Salaam, and her service in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu.

Parshall said she felt she didn’t really find her place at Elon until joining Periclean as a freshman in 2007.

“I felt pretty isolated to just events within my area of interest (global studies) until my global experience class. At the end of the course, my professor handed out applications to Periclean Scholars, which seemed like such a cool opportunity,” she said.

“I didn’t believe it was real. I mean, a bunch of 18 and 19 year old students about to address social issues. I was astounded.”

Parshall was no stranger to volunteering or immersing herself in cultures different from her own.

“I did a lot of volunteer work during high school- I worked for Habitat for Humanity, in soup kitchens. But I had never left the country before, which is why I thought Periclean would be so cool.”

Even though Parshall was well-versed in volunteering and had a passion for social justice, Periclean was nerve-wracking at first, as she recalls.

“At first I was really intimidated because we had a lot of go-getters in my class. But Dr Heidi Frontani was our mentor, who was really cool, and helped me feel more at ease.”

In 2008, Parshall traveled to Ghana with her fellow Periclean Scholars.

“I was tutoring African refugees when I was in Ghana. I was so astounded by the gratitude I was shown while there. It inspired me to drop the semester abroad in Sussex, England I was planning. I had some wiggle room in my schedule, and so in lieux of traveling abroad to England through Elon, I decided to spend a semester in Tanzania through University Corps.”

So during the fall of her senior year at Elon, Parshall packed up her bags and spent four months in Dar es Salaam.

“Dar es Salaam was a huge change in my life. It’s one thing to read about abject poverty, its another to see families living in it. It gives you a sense of gratitude.”

This gratitude propelled her to write a piece entitled “Swim Champ,” which details her experiences being a mzungu in Tanzania struggling with white privlege and can be found here.

The piece describes her experience of accidentally joining the national Tanzanian swim team, and the embarrassment that ensues. But on a deeper level, the story entails the nature of white privilege, and how it separated Parshall greatly from her peers.

“Even the good friends you make you would have uncomfortable moments with. One of our Tanzanian friends organized a trip, and at the end of t he trip, we realized he’d asked for way more money than was needed. This was really hurtful and made me realize the cultural gap was going to be much harder to bridge than I had ever anticipated.”

After graduating from Elon, Parshall spent two years in Vanuatu, working as a Community Health Facilitator. It was there that she constructed 30 new VIP toilets, managing and implementing a $9,000 USAID climate change adaptation grant, conducted community health outreach in malaria prevention, sexual/reproductive health, NCD screening, water and sanitation and child nutrition, and liaised with community leaders to form a disaster committee, create multi-hazard disaster response plans and coordinate food aid distribution. But it was also during that time that Parshall experienced a heartbreaking conflict.

“There was a huge cyclone, category 5, headed straight for Vanuatu. The American government sent us a plane, for only Americans to get on. It was so painful to know I was safe while everyone around me was panicking. I came back to help, but it was still such a hard time, and felt it divided me even more from the citizens of Vanuatu.”

In January 2015, Parshall started working for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (German Society for International Cooperation) in Venautu. Here she continued to help with aid efforts for the cyclone she so narrowly escaped. Managing a 100,000 Euro budget, she worked in emergency food aid distribution, food monitor training and knowledge management.

She is now back in the states, applying for graduate schools and looking for jobs within the realm of food security, always remembering Periclean for starting her down this road.

“Its all about the baby steps of what you’re comfortable with. Periclean made comfortable doing more than I ever thought I could. It’s what inspired me to do a semester abroad in Tanzania, and
to join Peace Corps, which is something I never thought I would do. I realized, through Periclean, that I didn’t just want to sell or provide a service, I wanted to work in community development. It’s interesting to me, and makes me happy.”

Her advice to Periclean Scholars?

“Study abroad- wherever you are interested to go. If you plan to do Peace Corps or any kind of volunteer work, invest in learning practical skills. The people that got hired in Vanuatu studied administration, medicine, logistics. Have realistic expectations about your time abroad- I am so happy I did it, but I also know that I didn’t save the world. You have to realize that’s ok; you still made an impact.”

The book “Mapping Our Success” published in 2015 by Dr. Arcaro’s own Carpe Viam Press, and written by Elon’s Periclean Scholars is now available in e-book format, in addition to its original print format.

If you haven’t heard of the book, make sure to check it out. This handbook is a large step forward for the Periclean Scholars program at Elon University. By including a large variety of information ranging from a record of successes by prior Classes to a clear and specific breakdown of the program, the handbook acts as a tool for both participants as well as for a wider audience of students, faculty and administrators at other institutions. With this handbook Periclean Scholars will have a point of reference regarding timeline, standards, and expectations for their Periclean career.

This handbook will prevent “reinventing the wheel” and create a medium for different Classes to showcase both their strategies and our unique process of civic engagement and global outreach. In order to accurately depict the changing nature of Periclean Scholars, the handbook will be an ongoing process that will be updated when needed, most likely on a yearly basis. The descriptive nature of the handbook will be able to explain the goals, mission, and intention of Elons’ Periclean Scholars in order to document the program and attract more participants.

To purchase the book on Kindle, click the copy of “Mapping our Success” on the right.

My name is Chace Blackburn and I work in the Periclean Scholars office. I am a sophomore strategic communications major, and my Periclean Class is concentrating on the African nation of Zambia. You may have heard some posts from me, or my colleague, Meg Griffin, but today I wanted to send out an update on the Periclean Foundation website.

I will be revising the Periclean Foundation website so as to make it easier to use and more informative. I hope this will gain traction, especially regarding the alumni pledge.

The pledge originated with the class of 2016 pledging to donate $100 a year. The Periclean Foundation admires the Class of 2016 and is expanding their challenge to every Alumni class of Periclean Scholars. If every Alumni would donate just $100 a year, just $8 a month, then we would have $15,000 dollars to support our partners and future Periclean Scholars. This is before the funding provided by our partners, such as the Redwoods Group, every year. Current and future projects would succeed like never before if all past and future Periclean Alumni donated just a small amount every year. By Homecoming 2016, we are challenging every class to do the same.

I hope that the additions to the Foundation website will be pleasing and informational. There is a lot of information now regarding the class of 2010 and their work in Ghana. Though that work was impressive, each class since Periclean’s conception has met objectives that need to be noticed. The work of the classes of 2006-2018 in such countries as Namibia, Honduras, Mexico, Zambia, Ghana, Sri Lanka, India, Haiti, Honduras, and even here in the Appalachian Mountains needs to be recognized and displayed prominantly.

I hope that the new edits to the website will bring everyone clarity as to what Periclean Scholars is and how they can get involved. If you follow the website, and have any suggestions or ideas as to how best edit the site, please email me at cblackburn7@elon.edu.

Peace, love, Periclean.

Chace

Follow the Periclean Scholars on Facebook

 

 

Class of 2018 

Bethany Lake and Samantha Perry were the speakers for the class of 2018. They presented on many topics including the committees the class has created, including: Fundraising, Video production, Steering Committee representatives, Public Relations, Planning induction for the class of 2019, their local partner, Habitat for Humanity, Current events in Zambia, and a Social committee facilitating class bonding and relationship building. As well, they have divided up researcg topics as so: arts and leisure, ecnomy, education, health and public health, environment, hist
ory, religion, political and international relations, and family and gender. They are now looking into issues that affect Zambia and the best initiatives to fix them.

 

Class of 2017

Olivia Gibson and Klesey Lane spoke on behalf of the Periclean Scholars class of 2017. They began by saying, “though we have had our fair share of setbacks, we are grateful to stand before you and say that our class is making progress. Last year we decided to focus on sustainable agriculture in Namibia and formed a partnership with Ecology Action. This organization educates others on a self-sustainable farming method called grow biointensive farming. This method yields 6 to 8 times more food and reduces water usage to less than a third of conventional farming methods. The method is labor and time efficient and well-suited for Namibia’s climate.” This semester, they are pursuing their contacts in Namibia and are hoping to find organizations that will want to share their newfound knowledge of how to grow biointensively and promote both sustainable farming and Ecology Action’s mission in Namibia. They are excited to expand this network to include Namibia’s Polytechnic University and the Finnish Embassy in Namibia. They have also pushed forward with our fundraising efforts on campus with a car wash, bake sale, and a gofundme page.Through fundraising they have donated both to the Ekamba community garden, which is using sustainable agriculture to help a food insecure community in Namibia and Ecology Action’s African Symposium on grow biointensive farming, which is taking place this November in Kenya.

Class of 2016

This semester, the Class of 2016 faced one of the most challenging experiences thus far, ending one of their partnerships. At the beginning of this semester, their partner Summit in Honduras decided to discontinue their partnership, cutting ties with their class. This taught their class that maintaining partnerships takes purposeful and honest communication, common ground on expectations, and the ability to truly listen and understand where someone else is coming from.They have continued work with their partner Hope for Honduran Children, who works with youth and community development in two different towns in Honduras.

Students from their Periclean Scholars cohort will go to Honduras during this Winter Term. They will be building more genuine, human relationships with the individuals served by Hope for Honduran Children. Other members will stay on campus, where they’ll be working to educate Elon about Honduras, fundraising for their projects, writing deeper reflections on their Periclean years, and collaborating with their locally-based partner, LUPE. Their work with LUPE has involved working on starting ESL classes, finding connections on campus to provide a volunteer base for the classes, and starting to write a grant for the program costs of the classes.

Finally, this semester they have also been continuing their efforts towards planning a business summit titled People, Planet, Profit to promote and educate about sustainable business. Through this conference they not only hope to bridge the gap between the college of arts and sciences and the business school, but to promote the fact that sustainable and ethical practices and profits are not mutually exclusive.