{"id":919,"date":"2012-11-20T16:54:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T16:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/?p=919"},"modified":"2017-06-14T15:34:29","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T15:34:29","slug":"rachel-bobren-04-volunteering-exploring-giving-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/2012\/11\/20\/rachel-bobren-04-volunteering-exploring-giving-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Bobren ’04: Volunteering, Exploring, Giving Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 20, 2012
\nBy Shari Kiple<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social worker alumni continues to learn about her work, and herself.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/a>
\nWhen Rachel Bobren \u201904<\/strong> came to Winona State University, she never imagined she\u2019d travel to four countries in two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no interest in study abroad,\u201d says the Schaumburg, Illinois, native, \u201cuntil I saw pictures from a friend\u2019s trip and thought, \u2018I want to travel, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Travel she has. Bobren toured New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji through WSU\u2019s Pacific Challenge course. She also studied social welfare in Bangladesh with six other students and Ruth Charles and Cathy Faruque, professors with whom she still connects.<\/p>\n

Touring Bangladesh schools and neighborhoods, Bobren found herself face-to-face with real poverty. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in a situation like that, all your senses are overwhelmed by your experience. That\u2019s what I appreciate about being in places that are so different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s why she volunteered as a social worker at an Alabama homeless shelter for a year after her graduation. Or why she served children in Nicaragua. Or why she spent two summers teaching English at an international peace camp in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou learn about yourself when you stretch beyond your comfort zone,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

When pursuing her master of social work degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Bobren realized Winona State had instilled a strong education and inspired confidence to strive for lofty goals.<\/p>\n

After interning in Chicago, she landed her dream job as the social worker for nearby Schaumburg Public Schools \u2013 a suburban district with students representing 77 countries.<\/p>\n

To help children develop positive identities and learn about one another, she launched Multicultural Week, inviting students, families, and community members to talk about their cultures, share food from their countries, and display artifacts from their homelands.
\nFestivities have improved awareness at her school and allowed Bobren to connect her passion for different cultures with her pursuit to help others.
\n\"Rachel<\/a>
\n\u201cI\u2019ve wanted to be a school social worker since I was fifteen, and I\u2019m grateful Winona State helped make that possible,\u201d she says. \u201cNow I\u2019m always trying to improve. I\u2019m still volunteering, exploring new places, and giving back to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A world she knows first-hand because Winona State challenged her to explore it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 20, 2012 By Shari Kiple Social worker alumni continues to learn about her work, and herself. When Rachel Bobren \u201904 came to Winona State University, she never imagined she\u2019d travel to four countries in two years. \u201cI had no interest in study abroad,\u201d says the Schaumburg, Illinois, native, \u201cuntil I saw pictures from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":1347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,2],"tags":[130,480,483,481,479,484,476,477,478,7,8,482],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-wsu-magazine","tag-alumni","tag-australia","tag-bangladesh","tag-fiji","tag-new-zealand","tag-nicaragua","tag-rachel-bobren","tag-social-work","tag-study-abroad","tag-winona-state-university","tag-wsu","tag-wsu-pacific-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/11\/bobren.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PQMT-eP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}