Rachel Malone is part of the 2024 cohort of the NCDE Access to Exchange Externship. For her externship project, she interviewed five individuals with physical disabilities who studied or interned abroad with the support of a personal attendant for a podcast series available on YouTube. Get to know Rachel in our interview with her below!
Describe your international education experience and what led you there.
In 2016 I studied Irish tourism, history and sustainability in Dublin, Ireland through CIEE.
I’m from a really small town, and things like study abroad weren’t told to me. It wasn’t until I traveled to Washington, DC for the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act that I started thinking about it, because while I was there, I learned about a scholarship for people with disabilities that CIEE was awarding in honor of the ADA anniversary! I decided to apply, which entailed writing an essay about where I’d like to go and why. I have Irish heritage, so I wrote that I wanted to know what it would have been like if I had grown up in Dublin with a disability. Once I learned that I received the scholarship, I applied for my passport and spent the summer at Dublin City University!
Describe your top three gains from your exchange experience.
I got to meet some of my extended family and see places my family had worked as I am of Irish heritage.
I got to be there during the 100 year anniversary of the 1916 rising so many events were held to address and commemorate that time.
I got to go to Dublin Castle and I ended up meeting the Prime Minister and a large number of Irish government officials.
How did your disability impact or not impact your experience? Did you have to request any support, or take any steps to manage your disability while abroad?
I was quite limited as to what I could participate in with my classmates. They often went to clubs that were down stairs in basements, and took affordable bus tours outside of Dublin. My wheelchair wasn’t allowed onto the tour buses because it doesn’t fold, and I did not have someone to assist me in placing it underneath a bus. And with the train, you had to make sure someone was on duty to put out a ramp to get you back onto the bus, so you had to leave your location on their schedule. While I was in Ireland, I didn’t see very many other people my age in a wheelchair.
I did not know that I could have brought along an assistant, and I had no idea the process to even go about finding one. The addition of an assistant for myself as a lifelong paraplegic would have made the experience easier and better on me. Through speaking to these individuals as part of my Externship project, I see that there are options available now. If I choose to travel extensively in the future to potentially difficult places, I will look into possibly hiring an attendant to assist me in getting my chair into buildings and onto buses and trains.
Describe your externship project.
I did an externship project around traveling abroad with a caregiver to assist an individual during international exchange. I interviewed 6 individuals, each with different study location and purposes for travel. They each went about the process of bringing a caregiver very differently. Some just brought along someone they personally knew and had a great relationship with. One individual even had their dad fly into the country ahead of time to hire a local assistant. Some people studied abroad for a college offering for a short time, and others got years long fellowships. One individual I interviewed even came from another country to study here in the United States.
Hopefully if someone hears these interviews and has been considering studying abroad, they may get some ideas for how to hire someone that can join them and assist as needed. Hopefully they will be able to arrange travel and have a great time while learning.
Visit Rachel’s YouTube channel
The Access to Exchange Externship Is a Program of the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange. NCDE is a project of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, designed to increase the participation of people with disabilities in all kinds of international exchanges between the United States and other countries, and is supported in its implementation by Mobility International USA.
