ProWorld Ghana Human Trafficking Internship 2011!

Overall, I thought this internship was really rewarding. I thought the food provided was substantial and delicious. I am a pescetarian and was easily accommodated. The Ghanaians who hosted me were fantastic, but the living situation was a little bit different than some of the other volunteers. It was not exactly a host family - the different members of the household were not all related or even close friends, but my host mother was renting the room from them. I wish that I would have gotten more of a family dynamic, and I would have really liked if we all sat down to eat together. We were served dinner in our room and the rest of the family members ate separately. Regardless, I still love my host mother and everyone I got to live with. I have established great contacts and we are still keeping in touch even though I am back in the USA. I know that I can count on them to make time for me next time I return to Ghana. ProWorld handled all slight problems very discreetly so that host families never suspected that an intern had made a complaint. Also, my particular placement was rather far away from the ProWorld house, and the ProWorld staff was very accommodating about this. If it got too late after language classes on Tuesday, someone from the staff would escort us all the way home to make sure we were safe. ProWorld always let us stay at the house in Cape Coast on weekends as well to make things more convenient for the interns on the human trafficking project. The project itself was very rewarding too. The community where we worked was also very far away from the host family and transportation costs were quite high, but we made it work by spending some days of the week doing office work instead of field work. However, I think it would be much more convenient if ProWorld could find host families closer to Immuna community where the project is. We were also able to take a trip to Volta region with a member of the Pro-Link staff to see where the trafficked kids worked, which was a very rewarding and eye-opening experience. I had a great time doing this internship and while everything was not perfect, the ProWorld staff was very helpful, and overcoming obstacles was a good learning experience for me.