By Reed Larsen
When Megan Dennis started her sophomore year at BYU, her friend Marcella Griner told her about volunteering to teach English in China.
Within a week, Dennis went from worrying about what classes she was going to take the next semester to paying to go to China as an English teacher for five months.
'I felt like I had to do something that was not centered on me,' said Dennis, 20, a junior from Bountiful studying pre-management. 'I wanted to serve.'
Dennis taught English to pre-school children in WuHan, China, last winter after volunteering through the International Language Program, a non-profit service organization based in Provo.
'ILP is not a study abroad,' said Stephen Brayton, associate director of ILP and BYU alumnus. 'ILP is a service abroad.'
Participants receive no pay, but are rather required to pay $1,900 to offset some of their expenses.
However, if volunteers pay within three weeks of acceptance to the program, they receive a $150 rebate, said Nate Mcculloch, 24, an ILP volunteer who taught English in China and St. Petersburg, Russia.
ILP''s purpose is to allow English-speaking young adults the chance to live in another country and teach English to young children.
'ILP has a two fold mission. First, to provide the highest level of education possible to children,' Brayton said. 'Second, to insure that the volunteers have a rewarding experience.'
ILP operates 18 schools in 10 cities scattered across China, Russia, and the Ukraine.
Some of the cities include St. Petersburg, Ufa, and Moscow in Russia; Hefei, Urumuqi, and Urumuqi in China; and Kiev in the Ukraine.
The volunteers teach English for three hours a day, five days a week.
ILP sends out volunteers twice a year, once in the winter from mid-January to mid-June, and once in the fall from mid-August until shortly before Christmas.
Volunteers pay for about two-thirds of their expenses, while children''s parents and their schools make up the difference, Brayton said.
ILP does not receive any other outside funding.
The $1,900 that volunteers pay, along with the money paid by students'' parents cover all of the volunteers'' expenses including air travel, room and board, visas, and some transportation.
'We each had our own rooms,' Dennis said. 'We lived at the school (in WuHan ) and had cooks that fed us.'
And the food was great, Dennis said.
'They toned down the food for us,' she said. 'I''ve never eaten so much in my life.'
Brayton said he feels their is a nobleness about the work ILP does.
'Ninety percent of ILP volunteers are LDS,' said Brayton. 'We have a code of conduct very similar to the Honor Code at BYU.'
Similarities include abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and profane language. Volunteers are also asked to be chaste in all relationships and to not date.
Because ILP teaches small children, requires volunteers must pay for half their cost, and a rigid code of conduct, those that are involved are usually great individuals, Brayton said.
'These volunteers really are the best people you can possibly find,' Brayton said. 'And as great as they are, they come back seasoned great people.'
Mcculloch said he felt his experience with ILP was comparable to serving a church mission.
'You can serve, you can forget a little bit about yourself,' he said. 'However, the serve is not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week like a mission. You can travel, shop, eat the food, and learn the language.'
Volunteers can receive university credit, but they must coordinate it with individual departments, according to the ILP Web site.
For information call 374-8854 or visit www.ilp.org.