CCS- Volunteer Placement

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Hello and Welcome! Today marks the one week point until I get on a plane for Ghana. For those of you who don't know the story, please take a moment to pull your heads out of your bums and inhale the deep sweetness of someone else bragging about themselves. Go ahead, breathe it in. Glorious.

Back in the early fall, I hurriedly gobbled down my lunch so I could have a few minutes in the computer lab to search for jobs that might allow me to explore a bit more. Instead of going to the usual esl sites, I popped into travelocity. At the bottom of the page, I saw a link called "Travel for Good." Interested, I clicked and began haphazardly filling in information about myself. The whole situation was akin to my morning drives down 77... I was unfocused, and operating mostly on autopilot with cups of coffee flying about at random. To this day I have little knowledge about what I actually wrote, and only really remember choosing Ghana as a place I would like to go if chosen for this grant.

To make a long, self-serving boastful story short, I won. Now, a few months and expensive shots later, I'm readying myself for Africa. I will be there with about 22 other volunteers from Canada, the US, England and Scotland. The age range of the volunteers is from 17-72, almost entirely female. We will be living together, Real World style in a three-house compound in a town called Ho. I have been placed as a volunteer with an organization called "Helping Hands." From what I've read about it, my main duties will include playing with children, traveling to different schools and leading sex education classes, and training teens to help other teens and children who have been sexually abused. Could be heavy, but I've got my big girl pants on.

I will keep this blog updated as much as I can with the limited resources available to me. I'm hoping that I will be able to check e-mail at least once a week, so please send on your comments and questions. I look forward to hearing from you- Charlotte.

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