Campus Conversations

How Oxy Pays You to Travel the World (Part 1)

October 10, 2011

I always tell fellow Oxy students that if they don't travel outside the country during their four years here, it's a shame. Beyond the traditional study abroad experience, there are so many other ways Oxy will fund an international trip. My first opportunity came when I was given a Davis Project for Peace grant. Because Oxy is awesome, at least one proposal from a student here is guaranteed to be funded every year. Lucky for me, that meant I would be flying over to Ghana in the summer after my sophomore year. My proposal involved digging a well, installing solar panels and rain harvesters, and leading community workshops in a rural village. The idea was inspired from my first volunteer visit there during the summer before I enrolled at Oxy, when I was introduced to a number of rural communities in northern Ghana that were having issues adapting to climate change. Once on the ground, it was quite an adventure. The rainy season forced my local Ghanaian friends and I to jump some hurdles to get all of the mini-projects completed in time. Overall, it was an incredible summer: It gave me a lot of context for when I study development economics and also inspired me to examine the emerging microfinance industry there the following year. Here are some pictures: [gallery] The proposal and final report can be read here: http://www.davisprojectsforpeace.org/projects/2010/node/1194 You can read more about the Davis Projects for Peace program here: http://www.davisprojectsforpeace.org/ This past summer, another Oxy student used the grant to lead education workshops in India to promote health and peace. Read about it here. I'll talk about my other Oxy-funded trip to Ghana in my next post...