Meet Paw

Paw Hope is a RISE AmeriCorps Member serving with EMBARC in Waterloo. 

Paw was born in Burma before living in Thailand for several years. At age seven, her family resettled in the United States. Paw graduated from high school in 2020 and gained volunteer experience helping refugee children improve their reading, writing and other school subjects. She is now an incoming third-year student at the University of Northern of Iowa, where she is studying Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in order to support children who were once in her position as ELL students.

Since arriving in the United States, Paw has been responsible for helping her parents with tasks such as translation and paperwork. She’s now passionate about supporting other refugee children and parents who experience similar challenges.

“I want to help refugee parents with paperwork and translating so they don’t have to depend on their children.  And I want to help the refugee children so they can improve in many things and help them feel not left behind or different from others.”

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