Dunbar knew she wanted a career focused on helping people with minimal resources after seeing how devastating Hurricane Katrina was to Louisiana in 2005. Dunbar wasn’t until high school when Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, and after seeing the result, she knew she had to join in. She volunteered with the Howell, New Jersey Police Athletic League to help those hit by the storm. Dunbar and the group made seven trips to Louisiana to volunteer.
While studying international studies and political science at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, Dunbar remembered thinking, “I really wanted to do more to help people in need. I have learned that many people around the world do not have access to the safety nets like people in the United States do. I wanted to go where there were no systems or safety nets at all. “
Upon graduation, Dunbar’s driving passion for doing more led her to join the Peace Corps. While volunteering, she was selected to help launch a new program in one of the world’s newest countries in Asia, Timor-Leste.
“My main project was education about nutrition, hygiene and sanitation. I worked with some local colleagues and lived in a host church. We worked with families to build simple hand washing stations from readily available resources like bamboo and wood and worked very closely with the children on hand washing and germ education, said Dunbar, who volunteered for a year.
Dunbar and the local staff started the program from scratch, and she was also responsible for identifying future locations for the Peace Corps volunteers and finding work that would most benefit the communities. Dunbar also learned Tetum, the native language of Timor-Leste, and served as an interpreter for English-speaking doctors on the US Navy hospital ship and Tetum-speaking patients.
Whether from her work at Operation Smile over the past two and a half years or her experience with the Peace Corps, Dunbar looks forward to changing the lives of others every day.
