Students travel to Ghana to help children in orphanages

After research, friends travel to give humanitarian aid

Hugh McMillan

special to the Gateway

My friend, Maria Lanier, shared with me a card and photo of Gig Harbor High School senior Maddy Fitzgerald. In the photo, Maddy is surrounded by three boys and three girls neatly clothed in their blue-and-white Ghana school uniforms.

“Beautiful!” Maddy had written. “Thank you for the pens, pencils and note (paper). It was an amazing experience but at times intimidating. Thanks to you, some students somewhere in Ghana are happily enjoying your gifts.”

I contacted Maddy. She related how she and her friend, Lindsey Frey, went on a journey to Ghana, West Africa.

The trip had been planned for months, and “we hoped to have the experience of a lifetime learning about a foreign culture and giving humanitarian aid to some developing country,” Maddy said.

With the help of their parents, the two friends researched different programs and found Global Leadership Adventures, a program especially for teenagers looking for service opportunities.

GLA offered a variety of different locations, including Ghana, South Africa, India and South America, and it incorporated a leadership aspect that allows participants to learn about local governments and their infrastructures.

“Ghana seemed the best country for us to work in,” Maddy and Lindsey agreed.

“After over 24 hours of exhausting travel, we finally arrived in Accra, Ghana,” the girls said.

They met some 50 other high school students from the United States, Canada, Bermuda, Sweden, England, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi and Kenya, and they spent the four-week GLA program visiting different orphanages and schools and learning about issues Ghana currently faces.

Maddy was assigned to Bright Future Orphanages and School which, she said, “was founded by a woman named Peace, who grew up in an orphanage and always dreamed of opening her own to help support local children abandoned by their parents.”

Peace’s orphanage was established nearly a decade ago and houses more than 100 children younger than 18.

Maddy’s time was spent assisting in school lessons including reading, English, math and science, and playing with the school children, teaching them songs and games.

Many of the children’s English skills are limited; the games and songs helped add English words to their vocabulary.

Maddy and other group members helped provide uniforms for the students.

In the next year, Maddy said she plans to help complete their partially constructed schoolhouse through donated funds, adding, “a Web site on Peace and her orphanage can be viewed at www.buildingbrightfuture.org.”

Lindsey was assigned to the Don Bosco School, a safe haven and school for children from the local fishing community established to lead children away from earning fast cash by working the streets. It helps direct the children toward going to school and getting an education, aiming for a better future.

Students ranged from ages 2-15 and attendance was not mandatory.

Lindsey’s GLA group developed an after-school program of tutoring and games focused on needs of individual students in math, writing and reading, and it also donated musical instruments for a music class they established.

“Don Bosco was unwilling to allow any physical changes to the facilities,” Lindsey said. “So the GLA students decided to create a music program.”

They donated drums, guitars, tambourines and a keyboard, and they were able to teach the students to play them.

“When we were not at our service locations,” Maddy and Lindsey said, “we visited the Ghanaian Parliament, listened to lectures by University of Ghana professors and experienced culture lessons from native Ghanaians. We were able to learn about the controversies surrounding foreign aid, malaria and free trade.”

After weeks in Ghana, Maddy and Lindsey came home with different views and opinions.

“Spending time in a very different part of the world was both a rewarding but challenging experience,” they agreed. “We both had a very generic, pre-conceived idea of what Africa would be like. The first thing we learned was how ‘Africa’ is an entire continent filled with different countries, different cultures and very different problems. Contrary to popular belief, all of Africa is not plagued with civil war, starvation and AIDS.

“In fact,” they ventured, “many aspects of Ghana reminded us of home. During our stay, Ghana celebrated 50 years of peaceful democracy — something celebrated every year in the United States. Commonly seen were hard-working individuals who hoped for the same success and life that many Americans work for.

“Our trip to Ghana was an experience filled with foreign culture and customs, yet the same universal ideas found anywhere else in the world.”

Their moms, Chris Fitzgerald and Mary Lou Frey, said Maddy and Lindsey funded a significant portion of their trip — Lindsey as a lifeguard in Portland, Ore., and being a nanny; Maddy by babysitting and doing a variety of other jobs.

“As parents, we contributed money and used airline miles for the trip,” they said. “We know at times the trip was not easy and are proud they had the desire to go to a foreign country to help in whatever way they could.”

And how very fortunate I was to be able to share their experience with you.

Hugh McMillan is a longtime freelance writer for The Peninsula Gateway. He can be reached at 253-884-3319.