Saying Farewell to Founder, Hansell Bourdon Woods

This summer Carpe Mundi bid farewell to Hansell Woods after a 10 year tenure at Carpe Mundi. Hansell came to Portland in 2012 to transform Carpe Mundi from a scholarship organization to a holistic mentorship program that included a cohort learning experience. Hansell was the Executive Director for 6 years, and then transitioned to what she loved the most, supporting a cohort of students for the remainder of her time at Carpe Mundi. She was the primary mentor for 9 different cohorts, started Carpe Mundi's second program PDXchange, and was the foundation for building out our mentorship curriculum.

Simply put, Carpe Mundi wouldn't exist without Hansell. Her leadership, vision, and passionate advocacy of Carpe Mundi students will be deeply missed, but also are a part of Carpe Mundi's DNA.

In as early as October 2013, Portland’s larger community started to take notice of the effort to see the world as a classroom. Lisa K. Anderson wrote an article, ‘Making the world a classroom’, for Pamphlin’s Media Group. In the article, Hansell states, “You can only do as big as you dream,” Bourdon said. “If you’re not aware of it, you can’t dream of it. Through those opportunities, students realize, ‘Oh! I can do this. I can leave and do something totally different.’ ”

Hansell is a dreamer and a doer. She and her family have moved to Colorado to be closer to family. We can't wait to see what amazing initiatives she dreams up and cultivates for her new community.

why your help matters more than ever

Carpe Mundi is committed to making transformational study abroad opportunities available to students that might not otherwise have access to these experiences, including low-income students that are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant. For the past nine years, we’ve strategically leveraged various resources to make our programming as affordable as possible for our students. Those resources have included generous donations from you and our community of supporters, in-kind scholarship donations from Carpe Diem Education, and using students’ Federal and State Financial Aid through Portland State University. All of these resources are crucial for making this opportunity feasible for our students. 

Unfortunately, Carpe Mundi received news earlier this summer that Federal and State Financial Aid will be temporarily unavailable to our students for the foreseeable future. Portland State University’s Financial Aid Office is being audited by the Department of Education, and until this audit is finished, PSU is unable to issue financial aid to our students. Fortunately, our students are still able to earn two terms worth of PSU credit for their study abroad experience, they just won’t be eligible for financial aid for those credits. We learned this news after recruiting two cohorts of students who are eager to travel during the 2021-22 school year, nearly half of whom have waited over a year due to Covid postponing our 2020-21 programming. 

Our number one priority is ensuring that this decision impacts our current students as little as possible. They have worked hard to access this opportunity, and we are committed to making this experience a reality for them. While financial aid varies from student to student, a student would typically average around $6000 in Federal and State Financial aid to be applied to their study abroad costs. Our students simply cannot afford to bear that cost. Fortunately, Carpe Mundi has developed partnerships to allay a significant amount of that cost burden. However, Carpe Mundi still needs to raise an additional $15,000 above and beyond our annual fundraising initiatives to cover the loss in financial aid. Our 10th Annual Gala and Auction on November 11th will have our largest fundraising goal to date - $50,000 - in order to continue to make our programming accessible to our students. 

With your support, Carpe Mundi students and our community have persisted through a challenging past year and a half. We are more committed than ever to ensuring students will travel, safely and affordably, in February, 2022. We are consistently reminded of our students’ learnings while overseas: the importance of flexibility, seeing situations through new perspectives, and understanding that persevering through challenging situations makes you stronger and more confident in the future. We know we will overcome this new challenge, and will be stronger for it in the long run. Thank you for being on this journey with us. 

If you have any questions about how this change in financing will impact programming, please reach out to Rachel Anderholder - rachel@carpemundi.org. 

To learn more about our fundraising efforts this Fall, click the link below.

Important Programming Changes for this Year

Upcoming Events: Storytelling and Auction

Storytelling Event is now a Podcast - Wednesdays in August

This year, in lieu of our Carpe Mundi’s annual Storytelling Night, Carpe Mundi students and staff are producing a podcast called, “Routes of Passage: Short Stories from Studying Abroad” to showcase the lessons learned and adventures had by the 2020 Carpe Mundi students. We are excited to share stories of determination and grit, interviews with students and staff, and personal statements of growth from our students after they traveled to Guatemala, Thailand, and India. 

Keep an eye on your inbox as we’ll be sharing a new episode with you every Wednesday during the month of August. 

The 2020 Auction is Going Virtual!  - November 20th, 2020

Save the date and get your living room ready - Carpe Mundi’s 9th annual auction and gala is going virtual! Join us for our dedicated broadcast, filled with unique entertainment, student participation and stories, and a joyous celebration of our mission. Stay tuned for more updates as they develop over the next few months. 

This event provides a majority of Carpe Mundi’s annual operating revenue. Join us in making transformational experiences possible for our students. There’s a world of opportunity out there - help them seize it. 

Interested in sponsoring the auction? We rely on business sponsorship to both support the event and to raise funds in support of Carpe Mundi’s incredible students. By sponsoring Carpe Mundi’s 2020 Gala, you can support future Carpe Mundi students, and have your business advertised to our networks. To learn more about sponsorship, visit our event page, https://www.carpemundi.org/upcoming-events/2020gala or reach out to Rachel at rachel@carpemundi.org. 

The Big Picture: Black Lives Matter with Kenya Hall

As Carpe Mundi staff and board continue to reflect on the Black Lives Matter Movement and deepen our commitment to being an anti-racist organization, we want to take this opportunity to amplify the voice and perspective of one of our alumna, Kenya Hall. Our alumni are community leaders that are moving equity work forward in their circles of influence. We all have much we can learn from them, and we are grateful to Kenya for sharing her words:  

On June 2nd I was able to hear black voices talk about how they had to "blend" in with their non-black community in order to exist, how they couldn't identify with their blackness because it was not and still is not accepted and how they denied themselves of their culture because it was a survival tactic. 

So often I feel like even talking about the life experiences that I have had as a black woman to other non-black people is creating discomfort for those people. I've silenced myself for so long to keep the peace, to spare the feelings of others who can offend and sleep peacefully as if nothing wrong was said, while I stare restlessly at the ceiling thinking about all of the things that I should have said and then waking up the next day pretending that it didn't bother me. 

I am tired of not being able to be upset without being seen as the "mad black woman" why can't I just be mad? I am mad because for so long I felt that my voice didn't matter. 

Mad because I felt the need to silence myself. 

Mad because I've spent way too long worrying about everyone else when I should have been speaking out for myself and those who needed their voices to be heard.

I am thankful to know that so many people see the importance of this protest because without solidarity, fighting this battle alone is impossible. #BLM

*Also, stop telling black people that they sound white.  What do you expect, a "thank you"? My voice does not take away from my blackness just because I don't fit into your stereotype”

Kenya participated in Carpe Mundi during the 2016-2017 school year, traveling to India. She has since graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Psychology. Currently, she is working in Human Resources for the Portland Spirit, while also doing some acting and modeling on the side, and pursuing going back to school for nursing.

Kenya in India.

Alumni Spotlight: Aris Beth Garcia Delgado

It’s graduation season, and we’d like to do a little bragging about our alumni and the exciting things they’re up to! Check out the short video below to hear from Aris (Central America, 2017).

Recent Developments

Happy summer from Carpe Mundi! 

Just as for many of you, the last few months have been quite the whirlwind for Carpe Mundi students and staff. Over the span of a few days in March, Carpe Mundi students and staff found themselves abruptly wrenched from their immersive travels abroad and sitting on planes homebound, several weeks earlier than expected. Carpe Mundi has always supported students post-travel, in-person, with multiple meetings a week at the Carpe Mundi office. Obviously, that support had to look different this year. 

Carpe Mundi cohort facilitators, Carol and Hansell, adjusted quickly to move their mentorship online. As an experiential education organization, Zoom meetings are new territory for us, but we are grateful for the opportunity to stay connected with our students. Considering the circumstances, it’s been a smooth transition. We got creative, sharing videos, reading articles, and even having a virtual debate. Hansell and Carol checked in with their students individually on a frequent basis, to make sure they had the resources needed to transition to life back in Portland. We had 16 wonderful individuals sign up to be volunteer writing mentors, and support our students through the writing process. All 18 of our students are on track to complete their 24 credits from Portland State. We are proud of their resolve and ability to reflect on their experiences, even though they were cut short. 

While the world looks different than it did a few months ago, Carpe Mundi is still standing strong. We believe that our programming is more important now than ever before: increasing access to higher education opportunities for BIPOC students, exposing students to different cultures and ways of thinking, and cultivating globally-aware leaders ready to take on new challenges. To that end, we are hopeful that international travel will be a safe and viable option for students next February, and are preparing for two cohorts of students for the 2020-21 school year. We can’t wait to introduce them to you this fall. 

All of these efforts aren’t possible without the support of contributions from individuals and foundations, and this spring saw some exciting new developments in the realm of fundraising. First, we launched our first ever monthly giving program, the Frequent Flyer Club, and have 22 members! It’s not too late to sign up, if you’d like to be a part of supporting Carpe Mundi students year round. We also received grants from the Richard B. Siegel Foundation to provide mentorship for our PDXchange cohort, and from the Black United Fund. We are so grateful for these generous gifts that create life changing opportunities for our students. 

Thank you for being on this journey with us. Now, more than ever, we appreciate the value of community. We’re grateful to have you as a part of ours. 

Rachel