Marlaina Martin
Brown University '11

Hello, my name is Marlaina Martin. While in Mali, I would love to work with and as a part of the community. I am an anthropology concentrator at Brown, and am quite excited to have the opportunity to experience other cultures firsthand and to help in any way I can. In the past, my community service has involved working with children. For instance, in my senior year of high school, I served as a member of a board of high school students who helped the town's library to plan entertaining events (i.e. in-library scavenger hunts, create your own adventure parties, etc.) that would help to get children more interested in reading and learning in general. Seeing the excitement on the children's faces during these events made me confident of the joy they would find in education in the future. This satisfaction led to me working with youth in my college years, becoming a CityGirls mentor in my freshman year and the Providence children's museum during both my freshman and sophomore years. As a CityGirls mentor, I went to a local middle school weekly to meet with young girls in who live in areas where college prospects are typically limited. Every week, our mentoring group would play a game that involves everyone first, and then splinter off to talk to our respective mentees about any questions or concerns they feel like discussing. My other commitment, for two semesters, was to the Preschool Friday program at the Providence Children's Museum. First as a volunteer and then as an intern, I worked as a teacher's assistant twice a week at a science-based educational museum with children aged 3 to 5. Each week, I would help prep and carry out lessons about different scientific areas (i.e. gravity, animals, sound waves etc.) In most of my efforts to work in the community, I work with children, seeing them as both dependent on opportunities given to them and willing to learn most lessons placed before them. Children have so much potential and excitement for the world around them that providing conditions for success, like working with Madame Togo's orphanage will do, is a hope of mine.