Kyira Knous (BSSW 2025) embedded herself in her academic progress and the campus community as she worked her way through the social work program at The Ohio State University at Lima. She is invested in being a great social worker and being a leader in her peer group and profession and it shows in her commitment to her clubs, her community and her development as a person.
Her sophomore year, she reached for even more and signed up for the Second-year Transformational Experience Program, which provides an opportunity for education beyond the classroom.
The year-long reflection on her academic, personal and professional goals under the guidance of a faculty mentor and through small-group cohort programming led to a transformational experience that took her abroad for the first time.
“I knew going into the STEP project that I wanted to study abroad. Ohio State has a catalog of different options that are approved and considered safe to go on, and I went through there and saw Argentina. I knew Argentina had a history of high trafficking patterns, so as safe as I can be, I decided that I wanted to go there.”
Building on the goals she developed with her faculty mentor, Kyira worked with the Child Family Health International program to tailor an experience focused on social work and her interests in the Spanish language and eradicating human trafficking.
“I went to Argentina for a month and studied mental health and addiction in a hospital setting, and I also independently studied human trafficking patterns going on there,” Kyira said. “While I was there, I was able to serve as a translator for some patients in the hospital and I was able to learn about different mental health practices that we do not necessarily use here.”
While in Argentina, Kyira soaked it all in – the pace of a different culture, the food, the people, the human connections being made.
“It has given me a really big eye-opening experience as to what it means to have cultural humility and to recognize that it is okay to not understand everybody and to not understand other cultures, but to be willing to learn,” Kyira said. “CHFI's main slogan is ‘Let the world change you,’ and I thought that this experience was exactly that for me. I feel like a completely different person coming back from when I went in.”
She would do it again in a heartbeat and recommends STEP to those following in her footsteps at Ohio State Lima.
“You have to take every opportunity as it comes and act like it is your last chance to ever do it,” Kyira said. “The world is wide open. It really is your oyster, as they say.”
