Ryan Mandado

[speaking Chinese] Hello, my name is Ryan Mandado.

I'm a senior at the University of Hawaii.

and this summer I studied in Suzhou, China.

The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) is funded

through the U.S. Department of State and it's a initiative

to get young undergraduate and graduate students

from the United States to study abroad

and learn and immerse yourself

in a critical language. I grew up in a

low-income community

in Hawaii. Growing up with Chinese people, Filipino people,

Japanese people got me interested in

learning another language

Well my first language is Filipino

I speak Filipino at home.

And in addition to that there are so many

Chinese immigrants in the state of Hawaii.

and my passion is for education and

throughout college

all I wanted to do was be an educator

to go back to my low-income community

I just want to use the language that I learned

to help these students so that they have

the passion to also go abroad and learn languages, expose them to

many cultures around the world because

many cultures around the world

are very similar to the communities that we have in Hawaii.

Where we are all diverse and we all come from different backgrounds.