Florin Langer

Florin is passionate about learning about different cultures, global issues like poverty, and conveying stories through photography, film, and writing to help build community. He has been president of the Heal the Bay Club, a student ambassador for his World Languages and Global Studies Magnet School, and a participant in many other service clubs. His goals for the year are to form new relationships crossing cultural and language barriers, learn new life skills, take away a new perspective, make a lasting impact on the community he’s placed in, and ultimately gain a better understanding of the world.

Learning

Florin Langer

2014-04-11

I apprentice at la Mancomunidad del Pueblo Cañari, an organization that carries out projects to stimulate tourism, aid farmers, and protect natural resources by managing and preserving water resources, improving pasture herbage, implementing agroforesty systems, educating children and adults about the environment and ancestral heritage, managing cooperation agreements between groups, encouraging socioeconomic development by improving...

Disparities

Florin Langer

2014-02-28

I have two homes in Ecuador, one in El Tambo and one in Cuenca. My host parents and I live in El Tambo during the week and my host siblings in Cuenca for school. I end up traveling between the two a few times a week. Although they are only seventy kilometers apart, the sharply...

Taking Time

Florin Langer

2013-12-30

I wake up in my host sister’s room to the screeching sound of my phone’s alarm. She lives in Cuenca, so I get to sleep in her rosado-colored room under her lion-printed blanket across from her porcelain doll that watches me sleep. I used to sleep in my host brother’s room, but it sits on...

Misconceptions

Florin Langer

2013-11-11

No, I’m not living in a shack. I’m not single-handedly building a school or orphanage. I’m not building wells or applying some “first-world” knowledge only I possess to solve the major problems that exist. But that’s not what I’m really here to do, and that is not the point of this bridge year. Global Citizen...

Saying Good-Bye

Florin Langer

2013-10-01

I want to start off by thanking all of my supporters for helping me to reach my goal of 2500 dollars for the Fellow Fund. I reached out to all of you in my time of need, and I was pleasantly surprised by the support you all returned. I found more support in some of...

Journey of Exploration

Florin Langer

2013-07-19

I am from Venice Beach, California. Well, I am actually from Germany, but I moved to Los Angeles with my mom when I was a year old. When I lived with my mom when I was younger, we constantly moved around Los Angeles, from Santa Monica to Hollywood to Downtown to South Central. Although we never moved out of...