“It's definitely encouraging to be around people who speak many different languages. It makes me want to be more worldly,” said Maddy Lafuse, a high school student in Columbia, Maryland, participating in STARTALK, the newest component of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI). The Baltimore Sun profiled this week the students participating in STARTALK at Howard Community College (HCC):

The program pays tuition for 70 students — from rising ninth-graders to those who recently graduated high school — to spend the summer learning Arabic, Mandarin Chinese or Hindi.

In its fourth year at HCC, the program exposes students to foreign languages and cultures, teaching them such practices as applying henna tattoos, organizing a market bazaar and making Chinese dumplings.

STARTALK, a NSLI program run out of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, has as its goal to increase the number of Americans learning, speaking, and teaching critical need foreign languages. It offers students (K–16) and teachers creative and engaging summer experiences in such languages as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Persian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu. For more information STARTALK, see its official website.