Amy Sebes '84: Living in the World and Making a Difference

“From all of the experiences that I’ve had over the last three decades, I know that education is the key,” Sebes said. “In particular, it’s the education of women that needs to be addressed. That is how our world is going to get better.”

 

Sebes knows this because she’s tutored children in the world’s third-largest slum in Mumbai, India, helped women who were former political prisoners in Burma (now Myanmar) transition out of prison life, and assisted female victims of trafficking in Albania. Throughout all these instances and others, both internationally and in the United States, Sebes has witnessed firsthand how education changes people’s lives.

 

Her life’s work has been as a teacher. After graduating from Hutchison, Sebes received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Tufts. She’s taught in six U.S. states and five countries. The peripatetic nature of her life is due to her husband Tom’s work as a diplomat at the State Department. Their posts have sent them to live in places where extreme poverty, political upheaval, and even modern-day forms of slavery are taking place.

 

In each location they’ve lived, Sebes has felt compelled to get involved. “You can’t live in these places and see the kinds of things that you see and not do anything,” Sebes said.

 

Staggering statistics bear out Sebes’ experiences. According to a World Bank report released in October 2018, “Almost half the world’s population—3.4 billion people—live on less than $5.50 a day. About a quarter of the planet’s people, or around 1.9 billion, make do on less than $3.20 a day, and 10 percent scrape by on less than $1.90 a day.”

 

“It’s quite unbelievable to think about if that’s not your world when you step outside your house,” she added. “That’s the world that we live in, and so many people are living in very desperate circumstances.”

 

Sebes and her family are currently living in the Washington, D.C., area where she is working with teens in danger of dropping out of school. And while that problem presents itself frequently enough in the U.S., she recalled that in India, where her family last lived, only one out of 100 girls enrolled in school complete grade 12.

 

“There’s no way that when we were in India, I could get every girl to go to school,” Sebes admitted. “What I could do is work toward the education gap and the gender gap in education in India.”

 

Sebes and her two daughters, Bette and Emmie, regularly visited Dharavi, the world’s third-largest slum, in Mumbai, where nearly one million people live in a one square-mile radius. They ran a summer camp, tutored children in English and history, and taught arts and crafts. They also showed them how to ride bikes and swim.

 

“The way you don’t get overwhelmed is to do something to work against the poverty or lack of education or whatever the problem is,” Sebes said. “Otherwise, you would just throw up your hands and say, ‘well, I can’t do anything; this is too huge of a problem.’ You have to understand that doing something, even if it’s small, is better than nothing.”

 

When she and her husband were stationed in Albania in 2003–2004, there were no English-speaking high schools for her to teach in. Nevertheless, she found a way to get involved. She was aware that teenage girls in the country were the victims of trafficking, and because she had experience working with girls, she volunteered at an organization that was trying to address the needs of trafficking survivors.

 

“One way that they said I could help was to write antitrafficking curriculum for Albanian schools to help girls from getting sucked into the trafficking network,” Sebes said. To write the curriculum, she first had to talk with the survivors and find out what might have helped them avoid being abducted. After she wrote the curriculum, the Albanian educators adapted it and decided the best way to utilize it.

 

As she talked to survivors, Sebes learned that they were traumatized and in various stages of post-traumatic stress disorder. She realized they wanted to regain two things most of all: dignity and hope. To continue this work, she founded an organization called the Association of Albanian Girls and Women (AAGW), created by and for victims of human trafficking in Albania. “The purpose of AAGW is to assist trafficking survivors in Albania by providing job training and job placement programs so they can find employment, transition out of the shelter, and live independently. Additionally, we are helping to prevent trafficking in Albania and to educate the public about trafficking.”

 

Sebes said the model for how AAGW is run was based on her experience at Hutchison. “When I was in high school, we were empowered to make important decisions. We had the time and space to have discussions, to think for ourselves, to take leadership roles, and to engage in a democratic vote. And that’s exactly what our model is for AAGW. Our beneficiaries are also our organization’s members and leaders,” she explained. “The survivors play a role in the decision-making of AAGW.”

 

Of the organization’s biggest success stories is the fact that one of its earliest members was elected to be the first president of the organization. Since then, she’s gone on to have a successful professional life, a daughter, and is an AAGW board member. “She, more than anyone else, knows the best way to spend our funds to help these women,” Sebes explained, “because she’s the only one who really knows what it’s like to have been trafficked, to be in this position, and to try to start over again and figure things out from scratch.”

 

Sebes credits Hutchison with her passion for doing good work in the world. “I was inspired by the teachers I had and even the chapel talks I heard. The older girls were role models for me. I was fed intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. I had such wonderful teachers at Hutchison that I became a teacher because of them. I had been given the gift of a great education, and I wanted to give that to other people.”

 

She added that she’s grateful for her travels around the world because they’ve given her a global perspective and opportunities she never expected. She stressed, though, that there’s plenty of work for Hutchison girls and alumnae to do in their communities.

 

“You don’t need to go to Albania to find need. There’s great need in Memphis, and one can look around the corner and an opportunity will present itself,” she said. “I think it’s best for people to find out what issues they care most about. Is it the environment? Is it education? Is it sexual harassment in the work force? Find what it is that you really care about, and you will find a way to address that. I believe that when people follow their passions, the world gets better.”

 

Sebes and her 1984 classmates were inspired by the recent story about the Class of 1982 and its ongoing scholarship fund. The Class of 1984 is currently in the planning stages of creating its own scholarship fund. Sebes, along with classmates Julie Bancroft, Ivy McPherson Hayes, Kim Dolan Johnson, Ellen Gannaway Lail, and Michelle Nelson Miller, want the scholarship to benefit a highly capable student who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend Hutchison.

 

“I’ve been given so much, so I want to give back. However, you can never truly give back,” Sebes clarified, “you only can give forward. Hutchison is one way to do that. On a broader scale, the world needs more accomplished women. The world will be a better place than it is now when more women are making decisions that affect our world.”

 

She recalled that when she was in India, people would often come up to her and beg. “I originally thought of it as, ‘they’re asking me to give them something,’ but I realized that when people came up to me and begged, they were giving me something that was much more valuable than anything I could have ever given them. They were giving me the opportunity to be a better person.

 

“When students do service projects, it’s important, but we often think that we’re simply providing a service to someone. However, the people we are serving are offering us the opportunity to experience personal growth as a human being.”

 

For more information about the Association of Albanian Girls and Women, visit www.aagw.org.