Adventures at UNI inspired a jet-setting career
Adventures at UNI inspired a jet-setting career
Before his time at UNI, Brett Meehan had only been out of the country once for a family cruise. His experiences as a student, traveling abroad to places like Italy and South Africa, introduced him to the wonder of international travel. Twelve years after graduating, this wonder hasn’t subsided, with Meehan now living in South Korea and regularly visiting Kenya for volunteer work.
“If you would have told me during freshman year at UNI that I would be where I am now, doing what I'm doing now, whether it's the safari trips in Kenya or just living in a different country, I would have thought that was crazy,” said Meehan. “It really all started at UNI because it allowed me to learn about a field I didn’t know existed, which ended up being exactly what I needed and wanted. UNI gave me the opportunity to go overseas for the first time. It was like I had fuel I didn’t know what to do with, and UNI lit the match.”
After working as a teacher’s aide in high school at a local elementary school, Meehan had an inkling that he wanted to do something related to education, though he wasn’t quite sure what. He knew that UNI would be the perfect place to explore this passion.
I'd always wanted to go and do things outside of Iowa,” he said. “I didn't know what that would involve, but I knew I wanted to do something where I could make an impact and help those less fortunate.
Meehan is still fond of his time with Camp Adventure, a program once based at UNI allowing students to lead summer camps on military bases around the world. His first Camp Adventure took him to Naples, Italy. The trip was highly transformative for Meehan and made him realize his dream of working overseas.
Meehan’s traveling opportunities didn’t stop there. He became part of the World Leisure Organization, which took him first to South Africa and then China. These experiences helped him settle on leisure, youth and human services — now recreation, tourism and nonprofit leadership — as a major.
“To me, those are the fun jobs,” said Meehan. “It’s people that don't want your traditional office job, but they still want to make an impact. They want to help others and do all the things that feel good that you get from the education field. But they also don't want the structure of an eight to five kind of job.”
Meehan’s time with Camp Adventure also introduced him to civilian positions within the military. This led to his first job out of college, which was being a teen director on a navy base in Japan. Later, he worked in Bahrain until he got hired by the army to work in South Korea. He now works as a program operations specialist for child and youth services. In his role, he oversees a child development center, after-school program and teen center. He supervises day-to-day inspections, purchases, budgeting, program planning and hiring. Meehan also plans trips around Korea for the students.
Travel has played a key role in Meehan’s life not only for his career, but also in how he chooses to volunteer his time outside of work. For the last several years, he has worked with Camp Ohana in Kenya to educate underprivileged kids. Interestingly enough, this passion project also started through a connection made at UNI. While Meehan was a student, he attended a Camp Adventure training where the program director for the Hawaii programs, Amos Balongo, was speaking. When Meehan later ended up at Camp Adventure in Hawaii, the two got to know each other better.
In 2008, Balongo started Camp Ohana. Meehan kept in touch and ended up going to Kenya for three weeks to help run the programs.
“After that, I was pretty much hooked,” he said.
The Camp Ohana programming features arts integration, including a photography program that Meehan helped start, and other educational opportunities. After getting involved, Meehan would go back to Korea and tell friends and family about his experiences. Often, people asked him what they could do to help.
As a result, Meehan decided to start offering tours, allowing people to come see what the kids were learning and then take a safari of Kenya for a few days. The cost of these visits raises money to help Camp Ohana continue. Although Meehan flies to Kenya twice a year to help Camp Ohana, it’s all volunteer work for him.
Whether he’s leading teens on a trip in Korea or teaching Kenyan children about photography, it’s safe to say Meehan often ventures beyond his familiar boundaries. That’s something he learned to do while a student at UNI.
“There were so many things in the leisure department that involved getting out of your comfort zone,” said Meehan. “It's funny, because now, I always preach getting out of your comfort zone to the kids I work with. When I was that age, getting out of my comfort zone was the last thing I wanted to do. But UNI pushed me to do it anyway.”
