All NSHSS members and their families are eligible for a ten percent discount on Projects Abroad programs. You can print out a discount coupon in the member area of the website under “Documents.” Projects Abroad also offers a program scholarship competition for NSHSS members: download the scholarship application. Visit the Projects Abroad website for more information.

Read about Project Abroad scholarship winner Jeff Kiser’s trip to Nepal in our next newsletter.

Volunteering with Projects Abroad
Soccer in Senegal

William Bejan
Charles E. Jordan Senior High School 2008
Durham, NC
Georgetown University 2012

Projects-Abroad offers people the chance to work in a foreign country in any number of areas for periods ranging from a few weeks to a year. I decided to spend this July working in St. Louis, Senegal, a place where I could work on my French, play football (soccer) with kids who love the sport, and further my interest in West Africa.

I had traveled to Africa before, including a brief visit in February to Burkina Faso, but this was a different experience all together. It was my first extended stay outside the USA, in a non-English speaking environment, and living with a local family. Fortunately, Projects-Abroad’s support for volunteers is exemplary: from meeting me at the Dakar airport, to transporting me the five hours to my posting, to showing me where to get a local SIM card for my phone. My “bosses” were always available and quickly became my closest friends. It did not take long to get into the flow of rolling out of bed and into the sandy neighborhood streets of Cite Niankh, avoiding the often negligent Car Rapide drivers and diving in between mopeds only to emerge having to dodge horse carriages. Walking to work was one of the great adventures of my stay as I traversed the quite picturesque Pont Faidherbe and worked my way toward Point Nord to start football (soccer) training every afternoon and evening.

Some of the players were younger than I, but much to my surprise most were my age or older. Their willingness to integrate me into the team was amazing. It is a testament to their effort that this could happen at all, because many of them speak only Wolof. Others eagerly conversed with me in French, which was often not much better than mine. By the end of my stay I was having fluent conversations with my team and treating some of my closer friends to a night out, something few could afford on their own. Many of their large families were living in small two room apartments and most had left school at fourteen.

The nightlife in St. Louis is truly impressive. During my stay I enjoyed live jazz music, a live Senegalese concert, crowded dance clubs, local Djembé (Senegalese dance) and late night eats at the local fast food joints. St. Louis is charming in that it combines this eventful nightlife with what is a very peaceful and calm inner city throughout much of the day. The hustle and bustle of my local neighborhood in the outskirts contrasted with the calm I came to during my work on the island with my football team.

But the highlight of my stay was the coach’s words as he thanked me for coming and for donating my used soccer gear to the players. In French he explained to me how my work had touched his heart, and it proved that there are still people in the world striving to do good, spread goodwill, and demonstrate their compassion for others. The little I had done had touched their hearts just as their generosity of spirit had touched mine.