Shortly after classes ended in May 2011, a group of students and young professionals traveled to Ghana for community-based service learning as part of the Center for Leadership and Community Engagement’s Alternative Break program. Alternative Breaks address social issues through education and volunteering. During this ten-day trip students worked with children in after-school programs and orphanages.
The team traveled through Kumasi, Accra, and spent a significant amount of time serving in the Cape Coast region. Trip members experienced Ghanaian culture through visits to various geological sights including an herbal clinic that works to hybrid traditional and western medicines. They toured the Ancestral River Park, the slave castles and cocoa plantations. They also helped paint new office buildings for the Abusua Foundation, the non-profit that the team collaborated with while in Ghana.
One particularly meaningful experience for students during the trip was the opportunity to conduct photography workshops in after-school programs. Ghana has one of the largest tourist populations in Africa. Through the photography project, trip members taught the children how to use cameras to take pictures instead of always being the target of an eager tourist.
Kali Matalon, a Mason team member who assisted in the schools, noted the difficultly of the school subjects her 11- and 12-year-old students were being taught, as well as their attentive ears and eagerness to learn. When sharing what the experience taught her, Kali claims that the trip was one that "made me appreciate everything that I have been blessed with in life. The kindness and generosity of the Ghanaian people have reinstalled in me a new found confidence in humanity, and whatever preconceived negative notions of Africa that I once had were erased by this trip."
Alternative Break Coordinator Terra Tolley hopes to organize another trip to Ghana in the future. She stated that Ghana is the ideal place to bring students to Africa due to its beautiful culture as well as opportunities for high quality service experiences. According to Terra, Alternative Breaks are an "experience that provides participants with powerful experiences to heighten self-awareness as well offer students a new lens for looking at the world."