The Ambassador

The ESOL Ambassador is a triannual publication produced by the Portland Community College ESOL Department. It features essays written by students at all levels of the program, submitted by ESOL instructors. The publication is distributed across various departments and individuals at PCC. If you wish to receive issues regularly, please contact Rachel Skinner by email at rachel.skinner@pcc.edu. 

Editor:  Rachel Skinner

Editorial Board:  Luciana Diniz

Heading Artwork: Karashma Rashidi 

The heading photo is artwork by a student, Karashma Rashidi.  Kara is a young Afghan refugee who escaped the Taliban after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. She discovered her love of painting while at a refugee camp in Qatar before she was resettled in the United States. She is currently a student and loves exploring with different techniques and materials in her artistic pursuits. She enjoys playing with color, creating abstract images, and creating images that remind her of her homeland and images inspired by the natural world. She sells her art online to help support her continuing education, something her sisters, cousins, and friends who were not able to escape Afghanistan have been denied since August of 2021.  

Her newest work is the portrait on the bottom right. It's called "Alive".  She loves it because it was a new style for her, and it was a big challenge. She wasn't sure if she could do it, and she had to work at it for a long time.  It makes her think about how life gives us a lot of challenges, and we have to decide that we are going to do it, and then we can. To visit her online store, click here.