Urge to help leads student to Africa
While her friends are spending their summer vacations at the beach, movie theater or just hanging around, Angela Allard will be heading to Africa.
The honors student has just completed her junior year at B.M.C Durfee High School and will be spending a month in the West African nation of Ghana as part of the American Field Service Intercultural student exchange program.
Allard will be volunteering her services in an orphanage teaching children reading, writing and math, as well as participating in other community service-oriented projects.
Allard learned about the opportunity in February when she was on a tour of Bowdoin College in Maine. AFS had a booth on the tour and she inquired about the options in the program.
According to Allard, students can spend a semester, a full year or a summer in the program and can go to a number of different countries.
Allard chose Ghana because she has had a longtime interest in the people and culture of Africa. She hopes to become a pediatrician, so working with the children in the orphanage was of particular interest to her.
“I’ve always been interested in Africa,” said Allard. “A lot of the AFS programs were just visiting and language programs. This one was a mission trip where you could go into orphanages and help out. That is something I’ve always wanted to do.”
Allard is leaving on Thursday and returning to Fall River on July 28. While in Ghana, she will be staying with Abena, a single woman with no children who works as an investment banker. There will be five other students from the United States and a couple of others from Asia in the exchange program. They will be assigned to their own host families, but Allard will get an opportunity to go on various excursions with the group at the end of her trip. She is also excited about a potential meeting with President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to be in Ghana on July 11 and 12.
Allard has spent a great deal of time raising funds for her trip. The tuition for the program is $6,900, which mostly covers the flights and some training sessions she is required to attend. Allard has raised $3,000 in donations from friends and family and local organizations like the Fall River rotary club and St. Anne’s Hospital.
Allard is anticipating learning about the culture in Ghana firsthand. She has never traveled outside of North America and is anxiously awaiting the experience.
“I think I will appreciate life in America more,” said Allard. “When you learn about other cultures, you learn that your way isn’t the only way. They may do things differently than we do, but it isn’t wrong, it’s just different.”
She is the daughter of Philip and Edith Allard and has a younger brother, Charles, who will be a freshman at Durfee in the fall. Allard is a member of the National Honor Society, ranks in the top 20 of her class and also participates in swimming and track. She hopes to attend Brown, Tufts or Boston University where she plans on majoring in pre-med.
Allard plans on blogging about her experiences in Ghana on www.angelaallard.blogspot.com. She hopes her experience will raise awareness of the conditions in the poverty-striken nation and also convince others to donate their time for worthwhile causes.
“I think youth should get more involved in community service,” said Allard. “It helps you appreciate what you have. It helps you become a better American.”
E-mail Derek Vital at dvital@heraldnews.com.
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