Abigail Blake

It never occurred to Abigail Blake that you could wash dishes with a tiny amount of water, a set of chopsticks, and a radish.

But at a Buddhist monastery in South Korea, Blake and other Experimenters received a lesson in dishwashing from the monks that would forever change the way the students thought about conservation. Once the dishes were clean, the monks finished their lesson by drinking the dishwater, careful not to waste a single drop.

"It was hard for me to think about how simply they live, compared to how I live my daily life at home," said Blake, a high school student from Wilmington, Vermont.

Blake was able to have this experience thanks to a generous donor's support for World Learning's Outbound Ambassador Scholarship. The financial aid allowed her to spend four weeks volunteering at a refugee center, cooking and sharing meals with her adopted Korean family, and learning about the aftermath of the Korean War.

However, it was her stay at the monastery that inspired Blake to take action at home. When she returned to school in Vermont, she couldn't help but notice the difference between her cafeteria and the monastery. In just a few months, Blake and her friends designed a new composting system for the school cafeteria. She hopes that the project will help the school and her community become more conscious about how much they consume and waste.

She also made some changes in her own lifestyle—driving less, taking shorter showers, and working to reduce waste at home.

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