By FRED KRONER
It’s the classic Cause and Effect scenario.
A decision made by a sixth-grader shaped the entire direction of his future.
Of course, Mahomet-Seymour’s Gabe Walder didn’t know how his life would change at the time, in 2000, when he decided to take French while in junior high.
Walder didn’t really even have a passion for the language either. He just knew it was something that would make him unique in his family.
“My older siblings (Caleb and Olivia) were both doing Spanish,” Walder said. “I wanted to be a little different.
“I chose French out of a selfish pursuit.”
His start in studying a language marked the beginning of 11 consecutive years learning French. In high school, Walder took the Advanced Placement (AP) French course.
That junior high choice – not immediately, of course – led to study-abroad opportunities, which led to taking courses taught entirely in French, which led to giving a group presentation also entirely in French.
“I felt surprisingly ready,” Walder said, “and stumbled my way through it.”
And, that is merely the start of the story.
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After graduating from Mahomet-Seymour in 2007, Walder’s thoughts about the future reflected the feelings of many teen-agers.
“Out of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” he said. “I had done some international mission trips, and I thought ‘maybe something international,’ but I hadn’t connected the dots in terms of a career.”
He started out at Parkland College and then transferred to the University of Illinois, each of those years working a French class into his course load.
Before Walder earned his bachelor’s degree in global studies, he studied for a semester as a junior in Dakar at the West African Research Center.
He would later return to West Africa, working on a clean water project, in Togo and Mali.
Walder was thankful for the foundation his high school French teacher, Katy Dueppen, had provided.
“She was the biggest influence who spurred me on in my language pursuit,” Walder said. “I was not very good at the written or grammatical parts, but was pretty good at speaking it.
“She was super-encouraging and put up with me.”
When he found himself in a foreign country, with few English-speaking compatriots, Walder was still comfortable.
“All of my classes were in French,” he said. “The only way to communicate, particularly in the more rural settings, was in French.
“The total immersion was really important.”
During the time that Walder was learning, it wasn’t just what was being taught at school. It was also about himself.
“I wanted to work with kids internationally,” he said. “There are a lot of vulnerable children.”
Walder spent six weeks in France one summer, doing missionary work.
He did his master’s program at Illinois State University, focusing on global politics and cultures, starting nine months after he earned his bachelor’s degree.
In the interim, he worked as the missions coordinator for the First Presbyterian Church of Champaign.
When it was time to seek full-time work, Walder didn’t have to wait long for an offer.
“I went to a fundraising dinner for Loving Shepherd Ministries and became connected with them,” Walder said. “I started working for them the day after I graduated from graduate school.”
He worked with Mahomet’s Joe Gerber, the organization’s director of domestic operations.
“We worked mostly in Haiti,” said Walder. “I was there (with Loving Shepherd Ministries) about four years, and used my French a lot.”
His work was important, but also heart-wrenching.
“We were working with children who had come out of domestic servanthood,” he said. “We had family-based care as they left those situations.
“My world was expanded.”
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Walder and his wife, the former Lindsay Ptasienski, lived in Mahomet while he commuted to ISU for his graduate work.
Lindsay Walder taught second grade at Mahomet’s Sangamon School for five years. The couple has a family of three children.
“I got married after undergrad, and my wife and I started fostering,” Gabe Walder said. “Two of our three we adopted. I’m very passionate about that.”
Their family includes 6-year-old Martell, Esmae, who turns 4 this week, and 1-year-old Leo.
Collectively, the Walders left the Midwest in 2017 and relocated to Washington state. Gabe took a job with an adoption agency on the West Coast, All God’s Children International.
He liked the work, and it was rewarding, but as he passed his 30th birthday, he realized he needed to pursue a dream.
“I had this grandiose vision of being in a leadership position for an organization that focused specifically on family-based care,” Walder said.
Last June – after what he said was “about seven interviews” – Walder was hired as the executive director for the non-profit Alliance for Children Everywhere (ACE), a world-wide organization which is more than 50 years old.
As he researched the company, Walder was impressed “to hear the mission they are doing in Zambia,” he said. “It’s all family-based care.
“It’s a foster-to-adopt program rather than run to an orphanage. That resonated with me.”
Walder calls it “the best job I’ve had in my career. It’s a good fit all the way around.”
He is based in Washington – though the family is soon moving to Portland, Ore. – and travels several times a year to Lusaka, the capitol of Zambia.
“We have over a hundred Zambians on staff, but there are only four of us stateside,” Walder said. “I’m in communication with staff every day.”
He is involved with all phases of the ACE operation, ranging from operations to fundraising, and works with a budget that is about $1.5 million annually.
“Every day is different,” he said.
Like many others in the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic has affected operations.
“In Zambia, there are only a few confirmed cases,” Walder said, “but they are closing schools and limiting gatherings.
“That is a challenge for us. A lot of our students, their main meal is through the school.”
ACE has seven primary schools and one secondary school – encompassing roughly 2,000 students – that it runs in Zambia.
“We’re trying to continue our food distribution,” Walder said.
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Walder is now in a job he could see himself retiring from.
“It is super-rewarding,” he said. “You have this sense of doing work that truly has an impact for generations.
“You are not only changing their lives, but those around them. You know you’re making a big difference. I plan to do this for my career.”
While his post-college jobs have all been faith-based positions, Walder said there was a strong force in his life that showed up even before he became a teen-ager.
Everything can be traced back to his decision to take French as a junior high student in the Mahomet-Seymour district.
Had he bypassed that one choice, Walder said, “it would have changed my whole trajectory.
“The decision to do that shaped the decision to study international relations. Without those experiences, I wouldn’t have been qualified for my career path.”
Walder doesn’t even want to contemplate how different his life could have been.
“I think about those little decisions,” he said. “In my case, things aligned better than I could have planned.”
