What is the measure of success? A young actor might aspire to a movie part or a recurring role on a TV show. But when Lauren Lovett (Group 23) turned 30 last year, she wanted a break from the treadmill of auditions, readings, and temp work for another kind of experience-"something to expand myself." Peace Corps service was too long. and she wanted to give of herself as an artist. A Web search turned up the Cornerstone Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian organization in Belize offering health services, domestic violence workshops, and computer training, as well as food and clothing for families in need. Their youth division included literacy and the arts. so, last summer, Lauren headed to Belize to "work with kids, using theater as a means of self-expression and creativity."

Her first surprise: "Almost everyone I met in San Ignacio and the surrounding areas had never seen a play-not even a church Christmas pageant! They didn't even have a movie theater." Her lofty plan to "inject theater single-handedly into a developing, multi-cultural country in the span of three months" needed immediate revision. With children in a Bahai-sponsored workshop, she created a theater piece in Creole (one of many languages spoken in Belize) about a teenage girl dealing with school, family, and social pressures. Entirely unaccustomed to reading scripts, memorizing lines, or being onstage, the kids were brilliant improvists, she notes.

Drafted to run a morning ESL class for Spanish-speaking students (despite never having taught before), Lauren bravely offered Shakespeare in the afternoons. On the rare days when kids could free themselves from housework, farming, and caring for their siblings, they worked on monologues in a language they could barely grasp at first. (Eventually, they became enthralled: "This guy's ma got with his uncle? No way! This is great!)

Lauren found herself learning just as much as she taught. Anticipating hardship, she discovered that life was easier in some ways at a slower pace; there was time to enjoy the beauty around her while canoeing on the Mopan River, horseback riding through hundred-acre farms, or exploring Mayan ruins. And what might look like poverty to a middle-class American eye is simply a different way of life-one rich in pleasures we seem to have lost touch with. The emphasis on family and friends rather than achievements or material goods is something she aims to maintain in her life back home. no matter what she does.

-Jane Rubinsky