Staff Spotlight: Luka Jiang

My favorite travel memory was traveling to the Philippines in 2017. It was during the Christmas period so we met lots of backpackers from Europe and the United States. My first destination is a hostel in Cebu. On the way the tricycle was heading to my hostel, I noticed a very interesting fact: Everyone I saw looks very happy and all the houses we passed by were playing very loud and trending music, and it was in a pretty poor area. It made me think that happiness isn’t about wealth financially, instead, the less fortunate people have, fewer concerns life will bring accordingly. I do appreciate the lifestyle these locals living in now and it encouraged me to enjoy my life the best I can.

I’ve traveled to lots of different places and have met lots of different people from all over the world, but still, working in EDU-PAL CHINA gave me the opportunity to know more people internationally, and it changed my worldview. Due to most of the participants are students from the university, so I discovered lots of different personalities and it reveals the cultural differences in verified society background, which is really interesting. The most exciting part is I get to know better about the country where they come from because the knowledge I got from books or social media might is not the real situation and it brought me lots of questions about this country.

So working around these cool individual souls, I got to know more at the same time while I’m expressing Chinese culture and interesting facts. Besides the culture that I learned, my skill of dealing with different people has improved too, and it’s very pleasurable to see our participants are enjoying the cultural events or trips that we organized.

I did SWT (Summer Work & Travel) program when I was in my second year of university to the United States; it was an amazing experience.

Frankly speaking, it literally changed my entire life value and opened a new world path. I was a typical Chinese girl who doesn’t know much about the world, about the other culture, doesn’t like to go out to do sports and have fun, as we said, boring lifestyle, but this program leads me to a colorful new world! I learned to sing English songs, dance with the music, go to the bar to have fun, camping and hiking, swimming in the ocean, cook western food, and I found out so many cool and interesting facts about a different culture. I became more “international” and my life became much more fun.

During this period, I also discovered myself love being a teacher to express the freestyle life value and eager to free Chinese kids because most of them has so many school work to do since kindergarten, they don’t really have much playtime, and the things they learned from school is just for passing the paper exam which is not quite useful.

I will choose EDU-PAL CHINA program, because this program gives individuals chances to explore other cultures, and also gain practical skills of taking care of a child and being an ESL teacher as I personally want to be a teacher as a life career. Besides, as I know normal Aupair program only requires to keep the company with the child and taking care of them, while Edu-Pal requires a higher level based on keeping a company, which makes it more interesting and challenging. I believe I can learn lots of skills that are good for me in the future of this program.

Last but not least, I will be offered with free Chinese course twice a week, this is a very big plus as I was always eager to learn a new language.

I think the most different part of our company is that we are educational-purposed, we really care about the child, the language skills they will get and the correct value leads from our Edu-pals, so it’s more than Aupair project, because we focus on something more instead of just being a company with the child. In another hand, we will offer more activities and trips to our Edu-pals and they will gain the abilities to be an ESL teacher and hours being with child after they finish our project; it might be helpful for their future career.

I believe the biggest factor in being a successful company has to do with an understanding of your company's core purpose and core values. When these are clearly understood, communicated and put into practice, I believe that success will inevitably follow. Besides, I think a good team with passion and cohesion will make a big difference to the company, it’s the root that decides how big and fast the company tree will grow in a long term.