I was given the opportunity to work at a social enterprise in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan. TajRupt is an educational NGO that provides local students with English-taught lessons in STEM and critical thinking. TajRupt's mission is to upend the development trajectory of Tajikistan through the development of human capital. Thus, students come to TajRupt as an extracurricular resource center to learn advanced topics not offered in school. Students say that TajRupt teaches them how to think, whereas their high school tells them what to think. I contributed to this mission by teaching my own course to students: Economics: Growth and Development. In my course, I reserved a majority of the time for in-class discussion, a style of learning prominent in the American educational system but severely lacking in the Soviet one. The students were given the opportunity to reflect on their country's economy, contextualize the history that has caused such underdevelopment, and ideate solutions to move Tajikistan forward. By giving speaking opportunities to the students, they were able to bounce ideas off of one another and share experiences from their daily lives. For our final project, the students formed groups and presented a comprehensive economic idea to advance Tajikistan's development. Students discussed topics such as import substitution, tourism, natural resources, education, job creation, and tech tax havens. My class ultimately gave students the opportunity to think about their own country in a creative and interesting lens. In this way, the students will go off to university, the workforce, or the home with newfound inspiration and optimism for their country's economic future.

For my course at TajRupt, the curriculum was largely inspired by my Principles of Economics and Intermediate Macroeconomics courses. I began the class with standard topics centered around development, such as the production function, the Malthusian model, and the Solow Model of Growth. While they are college-level concepts, I tried to convey them in non-academic English and even spoke some Tajiki Farsi to assist with the difficult sections. After numerous office hours and review of the concepts, the students were able to learn complicated economics material. For the rest of the course, I taught theories from books that were recommended to me by my economics professors. I went over Why Nations Fail, Poor Economics, and The End of Poverty in order to dive into the roots of economic development. The students, who grew up in an underdeveloped setting, were given the opportunity to tackle case studies about education and nutrition that have a direct impact on their lives. I remember that in my class about education, the students were so familiar with their country's educational system that they had many brilliant ideas about reforms and improvements. Teaching development economics was the perfect application of my studies and enabled me to spread my academic passion to others.

The largest challenge I faced was developing a curriculum that could effectively teach to my audience. In most developing countries, the curriculum is not tailored to the students'needs: it is either too slow and inspires boredom or too far above the student's level that they comprehend nothing. Specifically in Tajikistan, the post-Xoviet teaching style also stresses in-class lectures and discourages student involvement. For my class in particular, I had no idea what the level of mathematics, English, or economics was before the students arrived. Creating a curriculum before they arrived was therefore impossible. As a result, most of my work was done in between classes after thinking about each student's needs. For my first class, I chose to enact a thought experiment with my students over the meaning of economics and its effects on our lives. Seeing their ideas gave me valuable insights into the relative educational level of the group. These students, in perfect English, were able to discuss economics critically and reflect on their experiences. Their natural curiosity presented me with even more of a challenge: I would have to make the curriculum up to par with their impressive skillsets. I see the course now as much more than an introductory course on economic development, but a guide to viewing economic possibilities as a beacon of hope and change. For my students, I decided to shape the curriculum to be difficult and push the students to new heights, calling upon their creativity, critical thinking, design thinking, and presentation skills. In the end, creating a challenging course paid off, as the students created sophisticated plans for their own country's development.

I chose to work at TajRupt and live in Tajikistan to enter an immersive environment of challenges, constantly flooded by lessons on economics, politics, history, and life. After learning so much about economic development and the struggles for growth in less developed countries, I had to go to a place that was truly impacted by its bleak economic history. I chose Tajikistan in particular since it was the poorest post-Soviet state and also a Persian-speaking country. I have been studying Persian for the past two years and was finally given the chance to practice the language. However, going half-way across the world completely changed my perspective on economic development and gave me a newfound hope in the possibility of social enterprise as a route to help others in their day-to-day lives. Living in both the capital Dushanbe and the northern city of Khujand, I was able to experience the happiness and hospitality that defined the people of the country. Often, I never paid for meals and was given gifts since I was an American “guest.” From conversations with locals and my students, I came to learn that the worst effects of economic underdevelopment went to the average people, who often struggled to make ends meet yet gave away their few pieces of bread to their hungry neighbors. Within this context, I was working at TajRupt and seeing the profound opportunities of education firsthand – many alumni from the NGO went on to Ivy leagues, UN organizations in Tajikistan, and the partner AI startup that is making waves in the local economy. I realized that social enterprise was not only a method of spreading opportunity, but a catalyst for exponential investment into the people and their future.