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Layla Solatan

Layla is passionate about human rights, animal rights, and education. She spent her high school career as a student in her school’s Social Justice Pathway, through which she spent her senior year designing an experiment and presented a talk about her research on ways to alleviate stereotype threat in educational settings, hosted a social justice-themed symposium for her school district, and worked with her school's non-profit to support low-income students on their path to college. The summer before her senior year, she traveled to the Dominican Republic through Global Glimpse to teach English, which inspired her to spend a year in Ecuador through Global Citizen Year.

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Capstone Reflection: A very long, jumbled page of unfinished thoughts and run-on sentences

Layla Solatan

2018-06-08

[vc_video link=’https://youtu.be/AqGHF_Y7lGQ’] Coming back from Ecuador, I’ve been asked countless times, “How was it? What’s Ecuador like? Your experience?” If you’re one of these people, I’ve probably failed to answer your question. I probably answered with something along the lines of, “Umm… great! *awkward laugh*” I hope you didn’t take this as, “I don’t have...

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Madre. Nanay. Mother.

Layla Solatan

2018-01-02

My seven-year-old, meatless arms surge a fifteen-inch wooden spoon through a sea of nut and milk as it slowly transforms into a stubborn pillow of sucrose. I’ve thrown crumbs of pili nut along with three cans of condensed milk and sugar into an unforgiving wok. In just a few hours, these simple elements will all...

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Today’s lesson: Machismo. Take notes, boys.

Layla Solatan

2017-10-22

With respectful, friendly students and teachers, my first day of my apprenticeship was pleasant and running smoothly. It wasn’t until el inspector came into one of the classes I was helping with to call out of couple of boys for their hair length. Their hair was nothing you’d call “girly”—simply too long for the school’s...

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Things I hope I don’t forget

Layla Solatan

2017-10-13

A simple video about a few things special to Ecuador, Ibarra, or my experience that I hope remember long after my year here. [vc_video link=’https://youtu.be/NGbmfXlDZmo’]

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Saludos desde Ecuador!

Layla Solatan

2017-10-03

It's been a month since we were told that our flight to Ecuador was being cancelled due to Hurricane Harvey. Luckily, this was the only setback we had to deal with as a result of this hurricane. Still, it’s not the best news to receive the day before your flight to Ecuador for 8 months—the...

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