This essay is one of 35 selected by a panel of judges for “Ambitions Interrupted,” a series from The GroundTruth Project and YouthVoices, its storytelling platform.
Name: Meredith Sparks
Age: 26
Dream job: Interfaith Development Coordinator
City, Country: Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Current job/school: Communications and Advocacy Assistant at a global health nonprofit
Challenge: Student loan debt, geographic location
My dream job would be to work as an interfaith development coordinator for a nonprofit organization. Religion is an enormous force for social cohesion and it is only through dialogue within diverse communities that real world solutions can be enacted and inequalities addressed. I think that interfaith development and cooperation holds a great deal of potential for sustainable and grassroots solutions to gender and health inequalities because faith communities have the community ties, relationships and esteem to make significant changes in societies and their cultural practices.
I currently work as the Communications and Advocacy Assistant at a global health nonprofit. I would ideally like to be working to address gender and health inequalities from an interfaith perspective in the future. I would specifically like to focus on issues of gender development within an interfaith framework to improve opportunities for women of diverse backgrounds from all over the world.
This story was originally submitted to YouthVoices, a platform powered by The GroundTruth Project that encourages young people to share stories about the issues affecting their generation. Submit your own essays and answer new questions here, or learn more about global youth unemployment with this interactive map.