One Week Before Departure

Welcome to my latest travel adventure. In one week I will be heading to Vancouver to start a month long adventure with the Ghana-Canada Environmental Education Project. This project is a 5 year project between VIU (Rec & Tour, Forestry, & Nursing), and two Ghanaian universities with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) via one of their post-secondary funding programs (I should know this but am drawing a blank!).

This year we have four VIU prof's and 5 VIU students who will be joining a VIU alumnae and approx 20 Ghanaian team members in a jam-packed month of community development and capacity building. Our main areas of focus - under the umbrella of poverty reduction - are: ecotourism, waste & bush fire management, and HIV/Aids awareness and reduction. There is a lot of work to be done but the great thing about this project is that we are not going to Ghana as "experts" (good think eh!) but rather we are focusing on helping increase the capacity of those that we are working with (and our own) to work on and solve these issues in ways that are sustainable and relevant to the Ghanaian people. It more of a "learn how to fish" project than a "take someone fishing" project!

As you can probably guess - I'm working on setting up the blog right now instead of marking! However, I must get back to it, because if the marking isn't done I won't be able to head to Ghana and see the elephants!!! Oh yeah...and do work too!

I hope you enjoy this adventure as much as the others. I'll be packing a computer and of course my camera (this trip was a good excuse for new equipment!) so I should be able to keep up to date.

Aggie