• At all of our schools, we’ve closed out our YAN classes for the year! Final classes at all of our schools was rather hectic, since events at each school at the end of the school year, combined with a national holiday, combined...

Throughout classes this year, I have told our students bits and pieces about life in Costa Rica (where I grew up).  Sometimes, I use this as a tactic for getting their attention—breaking into rapid Spanish achieves instant quiet in the classroom.  Other times, I use Costa Rica as a point of comparison—when at the health clinic with a group of students interviewing a nurse about malaria, I explained Costa Rica’s nationalized health care system (an almost inconceivable...

I’m sitting in my living room at 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon. Classes have been cancelled here in Cameroon due to Ascension Day, and so with no school, our Buea Town students have been hanging out in town all day. I did manage to corral a few of them earlier today to come to our house and do some YAN work, and so now five of our students are sitting with me around the table, editing videos on our computers (I coaxed them here with promises of popcorn, and now Clara is glaring ...

Two weeks ago, I delivered two letters to Principal Ayompe Haddassah in Limbe— the first was handwritten by one of our students, Nelson, and requested an appointment to interview her about education for his final video; the second was from Josh and me, reiterating Nelson’s request in type with the YAN logo stamped prominently in the upper right-hand corner.    We’ve finally figured out the power of an official looking letter...

Last week, Nelson and I walked into ...