Your Alumni

Guiding young voices in Ghana

By Matthew Fox

It only took a year of working at a secondary school in Quebec for Barbara Kelly, BA’06, to know that she wanted her future to involve youth and education. The next step was figuring out how to combine those fields with her degree in international relations.

Through CIDA’s International Youth Internship Program and Montreal-based NGO Horizon Cosmopolite, Kelly was accepted to an overseas internship in Accra, Ghana. In August, 2007 she began a six-month position with Voices of the Voiceless (VoV) International Health Development Organization. Among other responsibilities, she guided the activities of the Public Health Club, an after-school program for 12- to 14-year-olds.

The 15 club members met weekly to identify public health issues harming their communities and to find sustainable solutions.

“The students addressed the poor sanitation at a local market, for example,” says Kelly. “They met with the market queen, assembly men and market women to discuss how best to address the problems of littering and lack of waste disposal. Through this process they developed leadership, teamwork, communication, problem-solving, advocacy, fundraising and evaluation skills.”

One day during her internship, one of the quieter, reflective girls in the club shyly took Kelly aside and asked: “Auntie Barbara, will you come back from Canada to make our next project successful?”

Kelly’s response was that she will definitely return to the country where so many people have influenced her. “But these youth don’t need me to help them in ensuring the success of their projects,” she says. “They are recognizing that each of them already has within themselves the ability to bring about positive change in their own lives, and realizing this was the greatest lesson I took away with me.”

Kelly says her experience has equipped her for a future in international education, a field in which she intends to pursue a master’s degree.