If you don't count the two hours for his one and only cross-border shopping excursion, this will be Owen Lewis' first international trip.
And what a journey he's taking.
Next week, the 17-year-old Grade 12 student at Port Coquitlam's École des Pionniers will join 25 other young B.C. francophones and their chaperones to visit schools and an orphanage in the Republic of Senegal, in west Africa.
There, they will distribute thousands of dollars worth of donations, including clothes, books, laptop computers, children's bed sheets, prescription eyeglasses, personal supplies and cash.
Despite his lack of travel experience, Lewis has been preparing for the humanitarian project for two years, having studied the developing country through Perspectives Mondiales (PM), an online cultural studies course run through École des Pionniers and offered as an elective to students throughout Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique, or CSF, the province's francophone school district.
To apply for the two-and-a-half week trip, called Yaakaar 2011 ("yaakaar" means hope in the Senegalese Wolof language), PM students had to submit a formal application with references, commit $3,500 for travel expenses and raise a minimum of $500 for donations, said principal Jocelyne Fortin, who will accompany the students for the third - and last - year to the M'bour region, about 80 km south of the capitol of Dakar.
"We just didn't want kids who wanted to go on a trip," Fortin said. "I said to them, 'If you want to go to Africa, get the money and go yourself.' This is very much a humanitarian effort that we're doing. It changes them profoundly and many of them, when they get older, will be part of organizations like Doctors Without Borders. I am sure of it."
Modelled after Pinetree secondary school's Global Perspectives 12, the CSF course was introduced by former Pionniers principal Raymond Lemoine in 2006. The next school year, he and an adult delegation, including Fortin, visited the Senegalese area that the students were to study and they committed to a three-year program that involved helping 60 of the most needy youth in three schools. In March 2009, the first 30 francophone students arrived on the continent, armed with aid.
Fortin said educators are now re-evaluating the PG program to see if they want to renew their involvement with M'bour or chose another French-speaking city.
The aim, she said, is to educate and empower rather than offer charity. "They don't want us to build schools or buildings," Fortin said. "They would be very embarrassed if we came all the way to do that. They want to learn from us."
Grade 11 Pionniers student Tiana Chan, 16, said she took the PM class "to make me think about other people in the rest of the world" and has collected about $1,000 worth of personal supplies from family, friends and neighbours as well as her eye doctor and dentist.
"I don't think I'll go to Africa many times in my life," Emmanuel Brassard, 16, added. "I want to learn about the ethnic groups when I'm there and I think, when I get back... maybe, I'll see things differently."
jwarren@tricitynews.com
