Ildana Ospanova

Ukrainian Refugees ESL Program
Volunteer Tutor

Ildana Ospanova is 17 years old. She grew up in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is passionate about literature and history and hopes to connect her future career with this field.

During her childhood, Ildana remembers always reading various stories and finding them fascinating. She liked learning about mysterious pyramids in Egypt or learning about unsolved historical mysteries. Ildana was a curious kid that always wanted to find answers to her questions, but later growing up, she faced a problem, and it became one of the most meaningful lessons that she learned; she did not have any academic progress, which made her realize that to achieve something, you should always get out of your comfort zone.

Currently, Ildana is involved in various extracurriculars that will help to develop her interests. She is a debate club member and often participates in international debate competitions. Also, Ildana was an English teacher for Ukrainian refugees, which helped her gain much experience. She is also working on her leadership projects, such as developing her website, whose goal was to help people who are learning new languages to make this process easier and more available. Ildana is also creating a podcast to discuss critical social topics. Besides that, she wrote a book with fairytales not based on gender stereotypes such as (princess-victim, prince-savior).

Getting into top universities will give Ildana many opportunities that she will use in the future to pursue her career and gain much knowledge in her field, with which she hopes to make changes and create more possibilities for others.