To provide a more personal context for my upcoming post about our project’s nuts and bolts genesis, let me share my experience with the development world up to this point in time:
I forayed into international development two summers ago; I spent three weeks in Ghana volunteering with the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Global Volunteers. However, that summer trip was a short service project, for which I had to pay far too much money to have far too little of an impact. I remember thinking about that while I was in New Akrade, Ghana, when I would pass the abandoned, half-finished project from a previous group’s trip- the basic foundations of what was supposed to be a new health clinic.
However, at the time my plan was still to hold off on my dreams of changing the world until I was “qualified” and had finished medical school and residency. Thus many of my observations about non-governmental, non-profit work would be put on the backburner until I would revisit them, once fully committed to pursuing social impact with the Global Impact crew. Now, to be sure, I learned a great deal during my summer in Ghana, but the work was clearly tilted towards the observational and self-, not the social-development, side of having an impact on the world…
~Lena
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