Monterey student learns about literacy and endurance in volunteer trip to Egypt.

Many local high-school students spent this summer playing sports, going on family trips and hanging out with friends. But 16-year-old Monterey resident Katherine Kamel traveled to Abnoub, Egypt for three weeks to help children in need.

Coptic Orphans Project Coordinator Mira Fouad explains the program, Serve to Learn, is built around the idea of full immersion. Volunteers—native speakers of English—go to the families’ homes and tutor children who do not have fathers (the definition of "orphan" in Egypt).

Kamel, who is considering a career in pediatrics, figured a trip this short wouldn’t do much to help the kids learn English, but thought she could make a difference in other ways.

“I was hoping that I would be of much more service in just being there and providing them with a different learning experience than most of them are probably used to," she writes by email, "one in which each student is respected and cared for regardless of gender or family situation, and one that is engaging and fun."

This isn’t the first time Kamel has been to Egypt. She's visited more than 10 before to visit family living there. These trips have create a strong bond to her roots, both in terms of her Egyptian heritage and her faith as part of the Coptic Church.

But this was a completely different experience. One of her favorite moments came when she was visiting three of her students at their home.

“As we spoke with their mother, we quickly found out that she was illiterate. This came as a surprise to me and the two other volunteers I was with, as all three of her children could not only read and write in Arabic, but also knew the most English of any of the other students in our class,” she writes.

"She went on to tell us that she was doing her best to put all three of them through a private language school. The stark contrast between the mother’s education and her children’s was quite surprising.

"What made this experience the most impactful of the whole trip was that this mother had the strength, desire and intelligence to want more for her children, and was giving them the means to rise above their situation.”

Now that Kamel is back home, she hopes she will be able to implement what she learned in Egypt throughout her life and draw upon it for motivation.