CONWAY, Ark. (August 14, 2013) – Recent Hendrix graduate Sarah Pullen of Richardson,
Texas, will be moving to Rwanda in September to serve as the principal at Nsinda
Ikirezi Primary School.
Pullen previously worked at the same school for two months last summer as a volunteer
first- and second-grade teacher.
In her new position, Pullen will be living at the school, teaching fifth- and
sixth-grade students, acting as the liaison for relations to the United States,
and keeping up with the scholarship program she’s running.
In fact, there’s not much she won’t be doing. Pullen will be a teacher, administrator,
mentor, businesswoman, publicity specialist, fundraiser, translator, water-fetcher,
and professional thank-you note writer.
By law, Pullen and her fellow teachers are required to teach in English, but
she is learning to speak Kinyarwanda, the local language, in hopes to decrease the
language barrier.
Pullen initially became interested in Rwanda through her friendship with many
of the Rwanda Presidential Scholars at Hendrix.
“I absolutely loved Rwanda,” she says. “And throughout my last year in college,
I considered many options of what to do with the teaching license I was acquiring
and kept returning to the school to teach there as an option since I had developed
good relationships with the owners of the school and the other teachers there.”
Originally Pullen just planned on accepting only the headmistress position. However,
after thought and prayer, she realized she had access to the richest country in
the world and could better help her school if she started ways for people to donate.
She teamed up with Commission to Every Nation, an inter-denominational organization
that sends out missionaries to wherever they feel called and to pursue whatever
they feel called to do as long as it aligns with Christian philosophy. As a licensed
non-profit, they allow Pullen to accept donations from individuals in the United
States to use at her school.
At some point Pullen might expand the school to include a high school or work
with the general education infrastructure in Rwanda but for now, Pullen plans on
staying at Nsinda Ikirezi Primary School until her faith calls her elsewhere.
“Perhaps it fits the most in the way that Hendrix has never been about training
someone for a job so much as it’s training for someone as a person,” she says. “That
works well for me since I won’t be working a typical ‘job’ anyway.”
To learn more about Pullen’s project, visit
sarahpullen.wordpress.com
and www.cten.org/sarahpullen
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts
and sciences education. For the fifth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of
the country’s “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report.
Hendrix is featured in the 2012 edition of the Princeton Review as one of the country’s
best 377 colleges, the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools
That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, Forbes magazine's
annual list of America's Top 650 Colleges, and the 2013 edition of the Fiske Guide
to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since
1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.