It’s a good thing Hannah Peart refused to listen to the skeptics around her. As she sits alongside villagers in remote Papua New Guinea — checking up on patients and administering life-saving medicine — it is the villagers who are glad she didn’t.
Diagnosed with several learning disabilities, including Dyslexia, Hannah was discouraged to pursue the one career she dreamed of having; working as a nurse in developing nations.
“I was told that I wouldn’t be smart enough, and that I wouldn’t have the ability to do this kind of work,” she says.
Skeptics aside, it was a prize trip to Vietnam that further fueled Hannah’s dream to work in the developing world, and got her through university. The road to graduation was not an easy one though, Hannah had to work even harder than most.
“It was a battle. It was hard, hard work, but I was pretty determined because I knew what I wanted to do,” she says.
After completing university, the doubts from childhood began to creep back in. Hannah started to question whether a career in the developing world was even possible for someone like her.
It was the discovery of YWAM (Youth With A Mission) — a youth-focused organisation that gave young people the opportunity to be trained and equipped in nations across the world — that turned Hannah back on course.
Now ten years on, Hannah has no regrets.
“Working with YWAM has given me opportunities that I never dreamed I would have,” she says.
Hannah’s role with YWAM has seen her scouting unmapped territory, conducting leadership and health seminars in villages, reaching unreached people groups, as well as providing much-needed health care.
“To be just as passionate then as I am now, to fall in love with it a little more every day is pretty cool,” she says. “Dyslexia is a title, but it’s not who you are. With determination and the right people around me, it meant that I could overcome and achieve my impossible dream.”
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