Page 8 - 2019 February

COVER STORY

her term as Club Growth Director, it seemed that
the trip to Pakistan wasn’t to be.
It wasn’t until November that she began to
get serious about the idea. Cate, who is on the
Beaverton City Council, wasn’t planning on

attending the National League of Cities training
in Los Angeles - there was too much on her plate.
Yet when Denny Doyle, the mayor of Beaverton,

encouraged her to go, she remembered that the
Near the end of her term as a Pathways Guide, consulate for Pakistan is also in LA. When Google
she accepted an invitation to be a Pathways Maps showed her that the consulate was only 10
Guide for District U - clubs around the world miles away from the conference, she decided this

that are undistricted. She was given 4 clubs to was one coincidence too many and decided to go.
guide into Pathways, each in a different country: Going to the consulate proved to be a
Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, and Pakistan. She pivotal choice - an error was discovered on her

held virtual meetings with them and was not application. If it had been handled through the
expected to go in person. mail, the visa would have been denied. After
About three months into her term, one talking to the official at the visa application
of the members of the club of teachers at the window, she called the person who invited her
Crescent Model Higher Secondary School in and explained the situation.

Lahore, Pakistan asked her if she would come “Let me talk to them,” said her new friend in
to their school’s annual conference. Lahore is a Pakistan.
huge city with 11 million people. The school was Cate pushed the phone through the little slot

celebrating their 50th anniversary, inviting her
as well as educators from Scotland and Finland
to come speak. It was called the International
Education Excellence Conference 2018 - Vision
2050.

Cate was honored that they would ask her, but
at first, she didn’t think it would be possible. The
process for getting a visa was difficult: she would

need to mail an application, her passport, three
months of financial records, an official invitation,
and a note from her mother (okay, maybe not
the note from her mother). She couldn’t even
figure out exactly how to answer some of the

questions. The wait for a response would be 6
weeks. Since she was also in the first month of

8 ONE COMMUNITY