Why are students choosing to visit a hospital, or an orphanage, or distribute food to the hungry instead of visiting a famous site or maybe visiting a museum? Here are some of their answers:
“To do something beyond yourself.”
“Because we all need help at some point.”
“For a reality check.”
“For the gratefulness in the eyes of those you have helped.”
Two of the most recent projects that Voyagers participated in were Operation Hunger in Cape Town and a visit to the SOS Children’s Village of Bambou in Mauritius.
Operation Hunger
The Townships of South Africa are home to millions. It is estimated that approximately 10,000 people arrive in Cape Town from the Transkei and Ciskei every month in search of work, that in most cases cannot be found. When they arrive, they squat land in the Townships and build shacks out of tin, plastic, cardboard, or any other materials that they can find.
Operation Hunger works to combat malnutrition and promote the dissemination of knowledge about poverty and malnutrition in South Africa. Its integrated development program includes locally managed growth-monitoring programs, targeted food support, water supply, sanitation facilities, health/hygiene education, income generation and livelihood programs, agriculture and food production. Two groups of Semester at Sea Voyagers participated on a program with Operation Hunger on consecutive days in South Africa.
The principal activity of the Voyagers was to help Operation Hunger staff ascertain malnutrition levels by taking weight and arm measurements of Township children and recording the results. The group was so touched by the children they encountered that during the bus ride home, they started a collection amongst themselves and put together over $300 to purchase toys for the Township’s children. These Voyagers also began planting a nursery, which the second group completed. The hope is that the residents there will be able to take these plants once they grow and start their own gardens.
The participants of the second SAS Operation Hunger group were the lucky ones who actually were able to hand out the toys purchased the previous day. After putting the finishing touches on the nursery and taking the malnutrition measurements, the SAS Voyagers spent hours playing with the children as the Operation Hunger staff tabulated the recordings taken by SAS.
After all of the calculations were completed, everyone went to a soup kitchen where the children
were to receive their meal, which normally consists of a soup with additional vitamins added in. However, the Semester at Sea Voyagers went into a store and literally bought every loaf of bread available and then took food from their own lunches that they had brought with them to make sandwiches for the children. In the words of Adrienne, a student from UCSD who was there that day, “The smiles we helped put on these kids faces were amazing. All we were doing was playing with them and it brightened up their day…it was completely life changing.”SOS Children’s Village
The first SOS Children’s Village was opened by an Austrian medical student, Hermann Gmeiner, in Austria in 1949. Today, there are SOS Children’s Villages in more than 106 countries and they provide homes to approximately 50,000 needy children. The Village that the SAS students visited in Mauritius can house up to 120 children and consists of 12 family houses, homes for the Village’s director and the SOS “mothers,” who help to take care of the children, a staff house, a community hall, an administrative building, and classrooms. The children who live here are for the most part “social orphans,” meaning that they have parents who are either in prison or incapable of providing care for a number of other reasons. About forty SAS Voyagers participated in this service project. They met with the administrators of the program, toured the Village’s facilities, and then spent time interacting with a number of the children who live there.
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