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Matt McCoy (American University '08) is a long-time Dalit Solidarity volunteer. When Matt leads an American University Alternative Break group to India in December, 2007, he will be making his fourth volunteer trip with Dalit Solidarity.
Matt began his work with Dalit Solidarity as a senior at Trinity HS in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Largely due to the impact his first three-week volunteer experience with DS, Matt decided to pursue a career in non-profit work and enrolled at AU in their School of International Service.
Matt took a leave of absence during the second semester of his freshman year at American, to return to India and teach at St. Patrick's School for DS. The initial focus of his trip changed radically, when the tsunami ravaged India's east coast immediately prior to his arrival in India. Matt and a team of DS volunteers spent three weeks working in refugee camps. (Watch Tsunami Smiles a film about the work of the DS team). Following their tsunami work, Matt and fellow volunteer Ryan McLaughlin (Warren Wilson College '08) returned to St. Pats where they worked for three months teaching English and computers to DS high school and community college students. When the Indian school year ended, Matt and Ryan took the opportunity to travel through northern India for three months. They spent a month with Buddhist monks in Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, and spent another month in Srinagar, Kashmir, living on a houseboat with a Muslim family.
Matt returned to India during Christmas break the following year with a volunteer group that conducted a camp for St. Pat's students. Music, art, American games and songs, and spoken English were all part of the camp curriculum.
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