The Diploma Divide

This weekend's New York Times has an interesting article about the Diploma Divide -- about how the gap between the access to college education is widening for rich and poor children.  As we start to plan for 2013, we are looking forward to tackling this sort of issue in the YASC trip to West Virginia.

Please think about making service a big part of 2013.

Happy Holidays!

Some past coverage of the trip to Nicaragua

Here is a post from the Nicaragua Dispatch that discusses that YASC trip to Nicaragua earlier this year.

Online ticket agency and Yale alums spent a week helping the impoverished community of El Castillo, Matagalpa

A helping hand: a team from Yale helps build a house in El Castillo (photo courtesy Crystal Astrachan)
By Viveca Woods / guest blogger 
March 22, 2012

SuperBoletería, a leader in the online ticket market for concerts, theater and sports, serving the Hispanic population in the United States and worldwide, last week sponsored a service trip to Nicaragua by the Yale Alumni Travel Service Corps. SuperBoletería’s corporate donation directly benefited a community in Nicaragua that is lacking most basic services.

The small and remote village of El Castillo is a vibrant community of 150 families in the northern department of Matagalpa. The community is in desperate need for clean water, medical care and educational opportunities.

Crystal Astrachan of SuperBoletería / Yale Alumn makes a new friend.

Residents of this town are eager to improve their lives, but lack the basic tools needed to access simple needs that are critical for the community to thrive.

Last week, volunteers from Yale Alumni Service Corps, together with the Council of Protestant Churches in Nicaragua, traveled to Castillo to build houses, improve education opportunities and install water filters in the community. All the efforts were designed to provide long-term benefits to the community.

Residents of El Castillo live in houses with dirt floors, and ceilings and walls made from corrugated sheets of tin or wood. Many don’t have access to clean drinking water.

The inhabitants currently used artesian wells and rainwater to drink, and have no nearby health services. The local schoolhouse provides students with education only to sixth grade, and residents walk for miles to get a college education or medical care.

Yale Alumni Service Corps (YASC) offers an innovative service opportunity for alumni, family and friends. YASC trips are based on the diverse talents and energies of our alumni volunteers to give critical services to communities in need.

The projects range from construction to medicine, education, athletics, small business consulting and more. These programs offer opportunities to work with local communities to enjoy a meaningful intercultural exchange and establish ties with amazing alumni who share a passion for service. Visit www.yaleservicetours.org to learn more.

2013 Trip to Ghana

Invites you to join us to serve in Yamoransa, Ghana, Africa August 1-11th, 2013 The Yale Alumni Service Corps invites you to join us on a truly inspiring service opportunity as we travel abroad to “give back.” From August 1 to 11 we return to see our friends in Yamoransa, Ghana, to serve this impoverished village and continue the great work begun last year.  Nana (Chief) Akwa II, village elder and leader of the community, has asked us to return so that we might, in his words, “again provide hope, inspiration, and motivation.”  We are grateful to be able to make a real difference. Last summer more than 150 alumni, family, and friends participated in this life changing service project. We need YOU for: Education and Arts: Teachers willing to share their interests and skills – music, drama, crafts, hobbies, as well as traditional subjects ‑ with primary and middle school Ghanaian children who never have the chance to learn anything beyond reading, writing and math. Whatever you want to teach, they want to learn! Medical Care: Doctors, nurses, PAs and interested lay people for this village with no clinic and in need of primary care and screening services. Business Development: Consultants to work with local micro-business owners – bakers, seamstresses, hairdressers, kenkey makers, and others ‑ to develop and grow their businesses and get more organized. Construction: Builders to help complete the community center, for which we laid the foundation last year. Public Health: Volunteers to conduct health education and awareness classes including aids prevention, insurance registration, sanitary and medical care guidance. College Mentoring: Mentors ‑ women especially ‑ to coach and counsel Ghanaian high school girls, to inspire and motivate them to apply to college. Sports: Athletes for coaching sports and organizing clinics. If you want to serve, we will find a volunteer opportunity for you. Alumni – and their friends and family ­ from all classes, graduate and professional schools are welcome. And there is no better gift you can give your children – ages 10 and older ‑ than working side by side with them to serve others. Last year more than 30 children were part of our service corps. They – and you – will learn on so many levels. This is a wonderful experience for families and individuals to change lives, including your own! While serving this village and its gracious and welcoming people you will experience Ghanaian culture beyond what any tourist would experience. We have limited accommodations for this adventure so please sign up soon! The cost is $2,250 exclusive of airfare to/from Accra. For more information, please visit us here or click here to register. First come, first served registration closes February 28th.

West Virginia 2013

Yale Alumni Service Corps

Announces the

 2013 First Domestic Service Trip to West Virginia

June 26th-June 30th, 2013

INSPIRE/EDUCATE/MOTIVATE

We are extremely excited to announce the first Yale Alumni Service Corps domestic service trip to West Virginia!!! On June 26th-June 30th, we will be traveling to Huntington & Montgomery, WV to work at Marshall University and West Virginia University Institute of Technology providing college counseling and writing coaching for high achieving low-income local students. These students live in an area that was formerly a strong mining community but has been depleted of jobs and opportunities for many years. Most of the students will be the first generation in their families to consider college so we need to help them have an unforgettable experience next summer and assist them to achieve their greatest potential for the future!!

 
College Summit sessions with volunteer coaches and studentsYASC will partner with College Summit, an organization founded by Yale alumni J.B. Schramm '86, which has established relationships with local schools in underserved areas of the Unites States to provide coaching and mentoring for students with the goal of increased enrollment rates at institutions of higher education. College Summit has been established in West Virginia since 2001 when they did their first test pilot program and since then they have touched the lives of over eight thousand students from twenty seven high schools. While working in a college setting, College Summit provides both college counseling and coaching in writing college essays along with activities in workshops that fosters student-leaders.

 
Coal transport train and river used for coal transport barges & power

Click below for the whole post

Far From Home, Briefly -- From the Yale Alumni Magazine

Check out the YAM article about the Yale Alumni Service Corps trip to Ghana. . . .

When the five buses roll into the Ghanaian town of Yamoransa, hundreds of children are waiting on the red dirt plaza in front of a low-slung concrete-block school building. The children bob and shout as 160 Yale volunteers climb off the buses and cautiously skirt the steep open sewer that separates the highway from the plaza. For five days in late July and early August, in this impoverished town on Africa’s Atlantic coast, this scene will repeat itself every morning: the volunteers plowing through the throng, the Ghanaian children reaching out for handshakes, saluting the visitors with high fives, and sometimes crowding around two ten-year-old volunteers to touch their long hair. (The Ghanaian schoolchildren have buzz cuts, boys and girls alike.)

Yale Alumni Magazine: Far From Home, Briefly (Nov/Dec 2012)

News from Nicaragua 2012

So much was accomplished by the YASC volunteers in Nicaragua!  We are looking forward to adding to this list when we return in 2013.  Join us for an exceptional experience where you could be part of:

• 61 YASC volunteers traveled to Nicaragua to work in the mountain village of El Castillo
• 24 Yale School of Nursing students and facility partnered with YASC on the program
• Additional collaborated with the Yale School of Public Health for students and recent graduate participants
• YASC awarded 11 scholarships to Yale undergraduates, graduate students and recent graduates
• 400 patients were treated in the Medical clinic and excess supplies donated to the local Health Post in a nearby village
• Health Education classes were taught in dental care, diseases, diabetes/hypertension, domestic violence and nutrition
• Construction work was done on two brick houses as well as the repair of a road and material relocation
• Participants assembled 100 water filters and distributed them to three villages
• Volunteers taught hundreds of children music, geography, English and computers
• Arts Group worked with students and adults to create paintings, jewelry, friendship bracelets and build drums
• Sports Group coached dozens of children in kick ball, soccer and baseball and donated new equipment
• A new school library was established with hundreds of English and Spanish books in new book cases

News from Ghana 2012

A few months ago we left Yamoransa. We’ve been home for a while now, settled back into our comfortable routines. Hot water. Drinkable water. Air-conditioning. Personal space. Restful nights. Riceless meals. You might be thinking back on your experience this summer and wondering…did I make a difference?

You will draw your own conclusions based on your personal experience, but here is the answer provided by the king of Yamoransa, Nana Akwaa II:  “Before you came we were a village that had lost it community spirit. You helped us find our spirit again. You lit a fire under us. You made us believe that things are possible.”

With your talent and skill you worked with Yamoransans to seek solutions for their poverty and other challenges that they face. Thank you for your collective efforts that:

• Inspired children with a love of learning, of the arts, of athletics, and opened their minds to a different culture.
• Provided care for the sick with knowledge, skill, and kind words.
• Built the foundation for a community center, and I don’t mean a foundation of poured concrete but rather a foundation of motivation and possibility.
• Formed associations of workers who can better leverage their skills collectively rather than on their own.
• Inspired girls with a model for success and the message to stay in school.

And many thanks to the organizations and individuals who made this possible:

• Our program was launched by with the assistance of the Yale World Fellows with an introduction to Emmanuel Asiedu, a World Fellow in 2008. We work in concert with our Fellows all over the world to identify targets of opportunity in impoverished areas.
• Kwame Otchere and AFS Ghana volunteers including Evans Yeboah, Eddie and many more who worked so hard in preparation and will be working throughout the year to sustain projects initiated by our visit.
• University of Cape Coast leveraged our time and talent to further build on their already successful social work and research in the community.
• Unite for Sight which put Yamoransa on its quarterly rotation, providing eye care where none existed.
• ONE and Yale for setting the stage for advocacy events to be organized throughout our network of Yale Clubs.
• Coca-Cola for supporting our efforts both financially and with six volunteers sharing their expertise with our college mentoring, education, and athletics teams.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you, the YASC volunteers. If any one person had stayed home, we would have accomplished a bit less, seen fewer smiles, taught fewer classes, or treated fewer patients. Most of all, YASC in Ghana could not have succeeded without the amazing volunteer leaders who worked tirelessly in organizing the project teams. Having worked hard to prepare for the projects, many of the teams arrived in Yamoransa to find that quite a bit had to be changed around and adapted to the reality of the community. We are all appreciative of the great efforts by the official leaders as well as those who became leaders during the trip.

And it could not have been done without the help of many participants from AYA and Yale including Johnson Flucker, Nory Babbitt, Alisa Masterson, Rick Leone, Mike Morand and especially the work of Joao Aleixo and the inspiration of Mark Dollhopf.

See you in Ghana next year when we return to Yamoransa and share even more amazing experiences with the community and each other.

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Kathy Edersheim: While Kathy was working as the volunteer producer for Ghana, as of the middle of April, she joined the AYA as part of the professional team. She is Senior Director of International Alumni Relations and Travel. Her primary responsibility is for the Yale Educational Travel trips with additional responsibility for YASC and the Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange.