Montenegro Community Center
Led construction of a community center and English education program in rural Montenegro.
Overview
In 2021 I took a career break to work with the Global Frontiers Project, a non-profit focused on community development, and spent the better part of a year in a rural mountain town in Montenegro. The job was to help build a community center and get an English program off the ground.
The Mission
The town didn't have a central space for education or gatherings. The goals were simple to say and hard to do: build a permanent community center within six months, set up programs that would outlast our stay, create real learning opportunities for residents, and build relationships that meant something.
What I Did
I led the community center project from planning through completion, which meant coordinating with local authorities and contractors, managing the budget and materials, keeping the timeline and quality on track, and doing all of it across a language barrier. On the education side, I built a curriculum for a range of skill levels, taught weekly classes for adults and children, trained local volunteers to keep things going, and tracked down materials wherever I could find them. A good amount of the work was simply being present: showing up to local events and traditions, learning enough of the language to talk with people directly, and adjusting our plans based on what the community actually wanted.
The Hard Parts
Most things were harder than they would have been back home. Few people spoke English, so I leaned on key phrases, visual demonstrations, bilingual neighbors who could help translate, and trust built through actions more than words. Resources were tight, which meant creative fixes, making the most of the materials on hand, building local partnerships for supplies, and prioritizing the essentials within the budget. And all of it had to happen inside local customs and rhythms, from how decisions got made to how a milestone was worth celebrating.
How It Turned Out
The center was finished inside the six-month window. The English program was running with trained local volunteers by the time I left. I came home with friendships I still have and a much clearer sense of why this kind of work matters.
What It Gave Me
Leading a project in those conditions stretched parts of me that engineering doesn't always reach: adapting on the fly, communicating across a real barrier, and keeping people motivated toward something none of us could do alone. Stepping away from a screen for a year to build something you can walk into changes how you think about what's worth working on. A lot of what I learned there shows up in my engineering work now, from breaking big goals into achievable milestones to explaining hard things to non-technical people, rolling with changing constraints, and paying attention to what people actually need rather than what's easiest to build.