Students Discover Passion in Ghana

Rather than going home when the school year is over, imagine getting on a plane, flying halfway around the world and entering a world entirely different from the comfort and safety of the Rollins campus. You are surrounded by traffic, congestion and noise. There are no paved roads, so after getting off your plane, you travel for six hours by crowded bus to a big city. You move in with a new family that has no air conditioning, washer, dryer, or dishwasher and has limited plumbing. As you walk through the streets, you witness many children running barefoot between the shacks they call home. For dinner, you are fed only rice and bread, but you know that most of the people around you ate much less than you did that night.

For three Rollins students, this was their experience. During their life-changing volunteer experience from May 8-25 in Kumasi, Ghana, twin sisters Lauryn and Justine Falcone (Class of 2013) and Meera Laxman (Class of 2013) worked weekdays at the Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital through the program Volunteering Solutions.

The Falcone sisters wanted to travel to Africa since they were children because they “knew that many African countries struggled with poverty and desperately needed assistance.” Although the initial differences were difficult to adjust to, they loved having the opportunity to interact with a completely different culture. Lauryn was thrilled by the friendliness of the people and children. “During a simple 30-minute walk, I might have heard 30 or 40 people say hello to me,” she said. “It was not uncommon for a woman to come up to me and hold my hand as she spoke to me, or a child to run up to me with open arms looking for a hug.”