Wait...When did i become an Adult???

 It has come to my attention that life has snuck up on me. When I was younger, I had this grand idea that when you become an “adult” everything about you changed; you were smarter, more respected, and completely different from who you were as a ”child”. Much to my surprise, I find that this is not the case, we are all still who we were as children, only better…. I hope….   This fact came to life when I realized that I was doing grown up things without even noticing, and people respected me for it.

They say Peace Corps changes your life, and it’s true, but again, I had the wrong idea about how that would happen. I figured that an epiphany would hit me and I would wake up and feel different, think different, view the world differently; for me, it was much more gradual and subtle. An example, I have worked at six different summer camps all over America, and enjoyed each one very much, but since being in Peace Corps, I figured out what it was that I loved about it so much, I have a passion for trainings; I love setting up and implementing trainings of all sorts. This knowledge came to me by accident and I have run with it; all it takes is one person to be a catalyst for how the rest of your life might be shaped. Two people that have been my catalyst for where I am now are Nicole Abrams, an RPCV Morocco- 2010-2012, who first told me about Peace Corps (which I had never considered before) and Kris Hoffer, my DPT (Director of Programing and Training) in Ghana; without these two women, I would not be where I am today.  Again, all it takes is a simple idea to form, for your life to be changed forever. 

This past week, I was invited to attend the first ever West Africa Food Security summit in The Gambia, where 8 different Peace Corps counties came to together to discuss where as a region, we wanted to take Food Security. We, as a region, have been chosen to be the “guinea pigs” for the new Feed the Future imitative, being funded by USAID.  This is next big project being funded around the world, by many different NGO’s and countries; the problem: to many people, and not enough food. Many of the wars going on right now are over land rights for the production of food. That’s why we are here, to help farmers in third world countries, implement better practices that better utilize the land they have and better preservation of said land for future use.   A quote I read recently sums up one of my main reasons for being SO passionate about this topic:  

“Helping people to emerge from poverty is one of the best things we can do for the environment.” – Bjorn Lomborg, Turn on the Lights, Please Newsweek, June 4^th 2012   

As president of the Food Security Task Force in Ghana, my main job is to help PCV’s plan, organize and facilitate In Service Trainings (IST) for other PCVs in country. In the upcoming 3 months, we will be holding 5 separate trainings on topics, ranging from bee keeping, to Vetiver grass planting, and how to build a rabbit/chicken coup. At each of these trainings, there will be around 10 volunteers and   their counter parts (their partners in their villages that work with them) making each training around 20 people. They last anywhere from 1 day to 5 days, depending on what we will be learning about. These trainings are one of the main things that the task force is focusing on; education is the first time to change.

 In summary, Peace Corps has changed not only who I am, but how i view the world and the place i hold in it.