Why Interaction International? (A Piece)

A friend of mine recently asked what got me interested in Interaction International and Dave Pollock’s work with TCKs and internationally mobile families.  It’s a great and important question, and I think it needs to be answered in pieces.  What follows is a bit about my first meeting with Dave and the precious gift that is language…

I first met Dave Pollock at a seminar he gave when I was a high school senior at Seoul Foreign School in South Korea.  Initially, I didn’t realize the importance of what he had flown across the ocean to speak to us about that afternoon in Robb Hall auditorium.  How could I have?  I had yet to graduate from my existence, as I had always known it to be.  But when I boarded the plane a few months later, flying across that same ocean to the United States of America - my country of passport, with the idea that I would be stepping into university life and beyond… my perspective on the changes I was enduring began to vividly kaleidoscope.  I was transitioning like never before, and I was in a very unique brand of chaos.

My parents signed me up for a weeklong transition seminar for Third Culture Kids returning to North America.  Upon arriving, I found that the workshop was being led by the same white bearded man who had come to Korea a couple of months prior, sewing the seeds for what became in the seminar a week of offering us TCKs a language of our own, a language that described a heritage we could be proud of, a language with which we could think about and begin to tell our stories.

Language is a deeply precious gift.  Have you ever heard the somewhat legendary line of reasoning that talks about how Inuit people can think more deeply about snow because they have so many more words for the stuff?  Well, in my experience, the same thoughtfulness applies powerfully to contemplating the nuts and bolts of one’s personal understanding of cultural identity.  It is for this reason that the language that has been and continues to develop around TCK cultural identity has been such a remarkably rich offering.  With language, one can think about and share more deeply in one’s own cultural identity and the cultural identity of others.

While I believe this is important for all people, I believe this is especially important for Third Culture Kids, who so often feel a very profound sense of in-between, continually experiencing the many seen and unseen benefits and challenges that come with such a significant heritage.  I want to continue to explore and pass along this gift to others.  And that is one reason I am honored to step on board with Interaction International today.

There are other pieces to this unfolding story, and I will share them in the days to come.  In the mean time, I continue to raise the funding needed to support my work with Interaction International.  Thanks to the generosity of many already, I am about 30% of the way to meeting my annual financial goals.

(If you’d like to participate through a donation, please see the first comment below.)

Comments

[Josh Sandoz]

Option 1: Go to Interaction International’s donor page on the website and make a financial contribution by credit card to my donor page. Here’s the link:

https://www.interactionintl.org/DonationsDetail.asp?id=22

Option 2: Send a check in the mail to P.O. Box 863, Wheaton, IL 60189. Make the check out to Interaction International, and in the memo line write that it’s designated for me.