<p>Though you mention the specific country you’d like to go to once, in general you sort of talk about Africa like it’s an undifferentiated blob of a continent. I see a lot of mostly well-meaning people talk about Africa in that way, and it worries me.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about the program you would like to go with, but if they’re taking 18 year olds with essentially no medical training, I doubt that you would be doing much of anything. It would be far more cost-effective for them to use local assistants. If you want to help people in this community, you would do better to provide financial support for a local assistant than to go yourself, as that adds in, at the very least, the high price of a round trip flight. Not to mention that I’m sure a local will have an infinitely better understanding of his/her community’s problems than an outsider will, even if the outsider is well-versed. Just for starters, do you speak any Ghanaian languages? While it’s true that many Ghanaians with administrative jobs speak English, if you are trying to help people in disadvantaged communities, you’re going to find it difficult to speak to them without knowing Akan or another indigenous language. How much will you be able to help people you can’t communicate with?</p>
<p>Local knowledge goes both ways, of course. It makes more sense for you to volunteer in your local community than for, say, the American Red Cross to fly in a Cambodian teenager to help out. You know more about what your community needs and can be more efficient in helping. Shadowing a doctor or a public health official in your city would do you well.</p>