Update: There will be an information session about the service trip on Wednesday, October 22 at 6 pm in Usdan 108.

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Chelsea Tweneboah ’15 has asked us to share this information with fellow Wesleyan students:

My name is Chelsea Tweneboah and I want to introduce an awesome and inspiring service trip with an organization that I am apart of, started by my high school teacher. The organization is called Ubuntu Global Connections, which is nonprofit and uses service to promote change In South Africa. This January we are planning on heading back to South Africa ad wanted to extend the invitation to the Wesleyan community.

There is lots of flexibility about the dates, itinerary and activities so just about any aspect of this could be changed if you or your interested students wanted to focus more or less in one area or another.

I am attaching a sample itinerary – this one was the trip our organization led with with students from Connecticut College in March 2013.    This trip was partly in Cape Town (where we worked with the children at Linawo children’s home, did some educational and cultural immersion activities and some outdoorsy things) and in a rural community in the Eastern Cape (where we worked with an educational non-profit, stayed in huts with families, hiked along the beautiful coast).

The weather in South Africa in January is very warm so beaches and outdoor activities would be a fun way to spend some of our free time.

Here are a short list of the most common activities we have included on various trips, depending on participants’ interests and budget.

• Service work (taking children on outings, setting up a garden, painting a house, helping high school classrooms, building an outdoor latrine, organizing a new library, helping students to do computer activities)
• Outdoor activities (hiking, kayaking, biking, seeing animals)
• Educational and cultural immersion activities (Robben Island and other museums related to Nelson Mandela or apartheid, cooking or language lessons, observing a church service, doing a homestay or having dinners with families from various backgrounds)

The total cost for a 12-day trip (plus two days of travel) would likely be around $3400-$4200, however some calculating needs to be done to get more accurate numbers.   This includes airfare and everything on the trip, except snacks, laundry and souvenirs.  Meals, lodging, ground transportation, guide and programs are all included.  In addition, this includes a $100 donation to the organizations where we serve and the group would decide how to allocate this money at the end of the trip.   Optional activities, not on the itinerary (which will be pretty packed), would cost extra.

Again, everything on the trip is negotiable.  We could do a shorter and less expensive trip and stay just in Cape Town or in the Eastern Cape and discuss other ideas or suggestions that you may have.

I hope this gives you a sense of how it might work.  I am imagining a 12-day trip within the dates ofJanuary 2-20, but even that is flexible. There may be students form Wellesley and MIT joining the possible Wesleyan group on trip.

Attached is further information about the trip. Please let me know if you have any questions: camotweneboa@wesleyan.edu
Sample Itinerary

For information on other experiential learning opportunities during winter, spring, or summer break, visit the “Get Experience” section of the PCSE Resource Center.