Tristyn McCabe
1. Please provide a brief description of your STEP Signature Project. Write two or three sentences describing the main activities your STEP Signature Project entailed.
For my STEP project, I went to Ghana, Africa to work in The Hope for Children Orphanage. While I was there, we worked with the children to teach them about having hood character and learning kindness. I learned a lot about poverty and brainstormed with my group things we could do here in the United States to help abolish it.
2. What about your understanding of yourself, your assumptions, or your view of the world changed/transformed while completing your STEP Signature Project? Write one or two paragraphs to describe the change or transformation that took place.
One assumption that I had previously had about Africa as a whole was that the people there were not living happy lives due to poverty. After going I realized that these people don’t know any different and this is the way they have always lived. Many people here in the United States feel as if people in Africa are upset with their life situation however, this is not the truth. The way these people live is all they know, and they find joy in their days by identifying the small things. I found this humbling to see.
Before traveling to Ghana, I was very quite and not very open to talking to people that I didn’t know. In Ghana, everyone is brothers and sisters. They say, “We are all one.” At first, I found this to be a hard adjustment because people I didn’t know would walk up to me and ask me my name, where I was from, and would have a whole conversation with me, knowing I was a complete stranger. When returning to the United States, I realized that people here don’t talk to each other very often. I’m my day-to-day life, I plan to change this and encourage others to create community between on another.
3. What events, interactions, relationships, or activities during your STEP Signature Project led to the change/transformation that you discussed in #2, and how did those affect you? Write three or four paragraphs describing the key aspects of your experiences completing your STEP Signature Project that led to this change/transformation.
When working with the children at the orphanage, I formed relationships that I won’t ever forget. The children taught me things such as perseverance and finding the good in everything. While I was there, we had to gather water from the river using buckets for the children to do laundry. Here in the United States, we would find this as a burden or a chore. In Ghana, the children taught us that you can enjoy being with one another, have fun, and complete a task at the same time. This taught me that perseverance doesn’t have to be difficult but rather is what you make it.
While I was in Ghana, we went to Cape Coast. This is a larger town in Africa that is on the ocean. While there, I met a man who worked with children to teach them to dance. He explained to me that when the children joined the dance team, he took on the responsibility of helping them financially with things such as clothing, schooling, and food. To raise money to help the children, he owned his own art shop where he hand painted and carved artwork. This taught me the importance of sacrificing small things in your own life to help others.
While In Ghana I learned how important perseverance and sacrifice are. Moving forward, I will keep my experiences in mind and work through things when they become difficult and find the good in small things. I also plan to consciously make sacrifices for those in need because I’ve seen that I have things very good in my life and others may need things more than I. I will make these sacrifices with no expectation of something in return but rather out of pure kindness.
4. Why is this change/transformation significant or valuable for your life? Write one or two paragraphs discussing why this change or development matters and/or relates to your academic, personal, and/or professional goals and future plans.
In the future I plan to work in the law system to help children who are being abused or neglected. Before taking this trip, I wasn’t clear on societal expectations for children outside of the United States. I feel that it is important to get a worldview on how other cultures view their children before moving into that field of work. Some cultures may identify one thing as child abuse, where others consider the action as normal.
After seeing how important perseverance is in everyday life in Ghana, I plan to integrate this into my own life, specifically my schooling and work. Due to the idea that my further plans require a lot of schooling, I know that things may get challenging at times. I will have to juggle things such as finances, grades, and family life, all while getting an education. Seeing how the children in Ghana had a positive attitude towards perseverance showed me that even though something may be difficult, doesn’t mean that it has to be upsetting. Moving forward I will have a positive attitude towards challenges and work to understand that life obstacles are there for a good reason.