Gap Year in Ghana for $2,945

[emeraldkity4]

My daughter loves Ghana.
The people are friendly and good spirited, they are fond of Americans ( although they differentiate between " americans" and their govt).

It is a very exciting time to be in Ghana.

What is Ghana’s Secret? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
The Statesman : Comment : Speech delivered to the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) on 23rd May, 2008, by the NPP Presidential Candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, MP
The K Experience | Construction in Ghana
TANCon 2008 - Saturday, August 16, 2008 - La Palm Beach Hotel - Accra Ghana

The worst thing seems to be the long air time to get there!

[MidwestMom2Kids_]

Here is the link to the Ghana volunteer program with InterExchange
Volunteer in Africa - African Volunteer Placements Include Housing and Meals

[emeraldkity4]

That isn't a bad fee. D already has a job and place to stay, but I would like to have some additional contacts in case of glitches, especially if the larger group isn't able to go with her.

[ReneeV]

I liked the article's focus on different options for many different areas of interest. I'll add one more: International Workcamps, Voluntary Service Projects, Volunteers for Peace

The organization is based in Vermont and places volunteers all over the world, in developed as well as developing countries. I learned of it through my daughter, who is on a short-term volunteer assignment in Lithuania, and someone from her floor at school is working this summer in Germany with VFP. VFP coordinates with local agencies, and there is a $300 fee per project, with terms as short as one week as well as longer term projects. The $300 seems to be basically administrative costs; volunteers pay their own transportation and in some cases also a small additional fee (in some of the poorer countries or where the co-sponsoring agency needs some additional money to cover volunteers' boarding costs). I do not believe it includes insurance.

The website's list of open projects is easy to search by country and desired term of service. I've had a few text messages from my daughter, and she's having a great time. She's in a camp teaching English and computer skills, working with two partners from Finland and France. We live in Germany, so it was a cheap RyanAir flight away, and a good way to fill two weeks before her regular job starts.

When D was first considering VFP, I put out a query on CC looking for someone with some experience with the program and had a reply from someone who recommended contacting the cooperating agency in question, since VFP is really just the go-between. I think that is good advice--I don't intend this to be a blanket endorsement, but the particular program my daughter is experiencing is very satisfying to her.

[MiamiDAP]

csleslie51,
My D. decided that she cannot afford to study abroad for time/classes scheduling considerations even though it is free for her in a summer as part of Honors program deal. I do not see much benefits but I never expressed any opinions to her, I let her to decide. Her position might change and she might want to go in a future and I will object to it at all. It is her life. She has plenty of experinces of different cultures here in US and she has 4 languages (her major IS NOT related to foreign languages). She has gone abroad also. Nothing special for her. She is spending her summer now volunteering here in her hometown and very happy to have this opportunity and very much appreciates living at home after staying in dorm at college.

[lalucha]

Read this article: Gap year students accused of being charity tourists who do little good - Telegraph

Unskilled volunteers often cost organisations more than they benefit them. Volunteers must be supervised, trained, and younger ones especially require a high level of care and guidance. Paying a fee to cover the cost of hosting a volunteer for a short period makes sense, and is ethical; shelling out the equivalent of a local worker’s yearly salary for a two month stint to boost your cv is not. The truth is that a donation of money or goods will most likely have a greater effect than the labours of an American, British, or Australian teenager.

Aside from these organisations’ abhorrent waste of resources and financial exploitation of communities in need, what I find most disturbing about the voluntourism trend is that it reinforces (or creates) a perception that foreigners from rich countries are more valuable than local people, or that communities in developing countries do not need or deserve the same standards of work and education. As a VSO spokesperson said in the article linked above:

"We would not expect young untrained people to come here and teach our children. So why do we send untrained people to other countries to teach English? Volunteers need to question whether what they are doing is of any use to the country they are travelling to."

I don’t mean to come down hard on people who take part in these programs. As someone who's worked, volunteered, studied and lived on five continents and in three developing countries I am a great proponent of the benefits of travel, and I believe that exploring other countries and cultures can give young people excellent opportunities to learn and develop cross-cultural undertanding. But these programs? Not the best way to help developing countries. When people ask me about short term, unskilled volunteer placements, I tell them to enjoy a holiday or study abroad for a semester in a developing country, get to tknow the language, people, customs and culture, and seek out local organisations that could use a donation.

[emeraldkity4]

So why do we send untrained people to other countries to teach English? Volunteers need to question whether what they are doing is of any use to the country they are travelling to."


well I don't know how efficent teaching English would be in Ghana, I thought that was already their official language

My D already has a job lined up to teach photography - (at a school )Ghana Youth Photo Project & the friends she has made have been writing and calling asking when she is coming back.

[mapesy]

lalucha, The Telegraph article makes some good points. It said:

A flourishing industry has grown out of the demand with dozens of organisations acting as suppliers of work placements and voluntary projects.

But as the sector has developed, many schemes have become biased towards the enjoyment of their volunteers and less about helping the host communities, says Judith Brodie, a VSO director.

"Some gap year providers seem to pay little attention to whether young people are making any long-term difference to the communities they are working in," she said.

I agree with you that many programs probably do more harm than good. What the article doesn't mention, however, are the few excellent international volunteer programs whose main focus is empowering communities at the local level to bring about positive change. Their primary focus is not tourism. Volunteers must work full-time, 5 days per week. These programs have few teenagers because the minimum age limit is 18. Since the volunteers are older, many of them bring valuable skills to the communities they serve.

My family has also lived overseas, so I've seen first-hand what the high quality programs of capable of achieving. In some developing countries, it's difficult to get donations to the people and organizations that need them most. Sometimes international volunteer organizations are the only groups providing aid to local communities in these countries.

Just choose your program carefully.

[pamavision]

"I guess I am missing any serious reason to go."

My 18-year-old daughter just returned from two months volunteering in Vietnam with Global Volunteer Network. This is a kid who's grown up in one of the most privileged, wealthy communities in the country (a friend's mom got $90 million in the divorce, as an example).

What can an inexperienced 18-year-old do to help? Well, she and her fellow volunteers played with the orphans, did physical therapy with the disabled children, and helped teach kindergarteners rudimentary English. She became adept at comforting a child who was in constant pain, changed diapers, and acted as an advocate for a disabled girl who was clearly quite bright but was not attending school because the director felt it wasn't necessary. (She and the other volunteers arranged transportation for the girl and purchased school uniforms for her. She was elated to get an e-mail upon her return saying that the girl had just completed her first day of school!)

She was the only American in the group - she now has Vietnamese friends, Australian friends, British friends, and friends from New Zealand. (Her Facebook page is like a mini United Nations.) The GVN volunteers were highly regarded in the community, so she served as a de facto goodwill ambassador for her country, even as she confronted a shameful part of our past when she went to My Lai for the 40th anniversary of the massacre. She has seen first-hand what it's like to live under Communism, and has learned that a war doesn't necessarily end when the truce is declared - the area she was in was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange in the '60's and '70's, and the war's effects persist in the large number of birth defects seen in the local population. She was also able to travel a little bit through Laos and Cambodia, and can report from first-hand experience that elephants are very large and you have to get out of their way when you're trying to cross the street!

My daughter left high school a year early - yesterday was graduation day, and I was a little bit sad that she wasn't participating in that rite of passage with her childhood friends. Then I reflected on the year she's had, and the things she's learned, and the ways in which she's grown, and I wasn't sad any more.

Not every kid is able to get on a plane by herself to go to a Third World country where she knows no one and doesn't speak the language - but for those who do, the experience can be life-changing.

Pretty good reasons in my book.

[PlattsburghLoser]

Thank you for posting this!

I'm a college junior and spent the fall semester in Beijing and the following spring Shanghai. Together, the trip set me back $38,000. (Even though it was entirely tax deductible for my mother.)
I wanted to study abroad again - but for financial reasons, leery of it since I still need the funds up front.
Finally, there's a program I can actually afford.

As for those saying there's no reason to study abroad - I felt I grew the most being in China (and also became fluent in Mandarin) in that one year than I had ever before. I also was forced to see the amount of freedom I took for granted. For example, in China, most user-interactive websites (Xanga, Wikipedia, etc.) are blocked.

[MiamiDAP]

I believe that we should let kids to decide. If they want to go, they should. However, it is incorrect to say that it is more valuable to help people abroad than to help people in their own hometown. They can grow and have wonderful experiences in Americaa if THEY choose not to go abroad either for study or volunteer. I told my kids since they were toddlers that they are very priviliged to live in the US, they know that freedom and level of living are nowhere close in other contries. Kids who wants to go, should take any opportunity to do so, but kids who choose to have their experiences here should feel good about it also.

[bartleby]

"I wouldn't say it's a "good chance" to contract a disease for the rest of your life. I spent a good part of my childhood in Africa and neither I nor any of my family contracted anything serious. You get your shots, you take your malaria pills, you don't drink unboiled water and you should be fine"

Unprotected sex with the locals is also probably a no-no.

[pamavision]

What I have told my children about life and what they have experienced for themselves are two different things. At the tender age of 18, my daughter has knowledge and life experiences that I can only dream about. They will enrich her for the rest of her life.

MiamiDAP, why is this such an issue with you? Why do you feel compelled to argue that this is not an incredibly valuable experience, when those who have been there/done that say otherwise? No one is forcing your kid to go abroad.

I should add that there are some hidden costs to this type of trip - our bill for the recommended vaccinations came to $1500, much of which was not covered by insurance. Still worth it.

D will spend fall semester in Paris - no vaccinations required!

[owlice]

Unprotected sex with the locals is also probably a no-no.

Unprotected sex with "the locals" everywhere is a no-no.

[hsmomstef]

mapesy -- would you mind sharing the names of the few excellent volunteer programs you talk about that are still about empower the local community? Son will be planning his gap year soon, so that would be very good info to have!