Building Blocks for Global Careers
Attending the Language Villages in her youth gave Sonia Sheikh the confidence to learn multiple languages: she currently uses three languages on a daily basis, speaks five proficiently, and is learning a sixth.
Always the highlight of her year, camp was a place where Sonia eagerly participated in canoe-tipping, singing around the campfire, and swimming early in the mornings. She felt instantly at home at Grüne Welle, the environmental education and language immersion specialty program at Waldsee German Language Village. She learned at Waldsee that language learning doesn’t need to be boring.
Surrounding herself in the many cultures represented at the Language Villages was the beginning of a global appreciation and perspective for Sonia. These experiences, she says, fueled her optimism that individuals and nations can indeed work across international borders.
Sonia put this optimism to work as she set off to college and was a participant and leader of many international organizations. She went on to live in Germany, India, France, Japan, and the Dominican Republic. Currently, she lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, working as a regional project manager for health projects in Central and East Africa. Even after all these international experiences, Sonia’s memories of her days at Concordia Language Villages remain close in her mind.
She says that Concordia Language Villages nurtured and perhaps even launched her global awareness. Her knowledge of German from Waldsee undoubtedly assisted her in her career path. Sonia affirms that knowing a second language can dramatically change your life and living in an international setting draws you in and transforms you. Meeting people with a different worldview often leads to reevaluation of your own conceptions and appreciation of other ways of life.
Concordia Language Villages provided a foundation for Sonia’s road of international awareness and service. She believes in this “wonderful service to young people” and looks forward to a bright, multilingual, multicultural future.
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