Giving a blank page to the unheard.
A professor at Regis University recently told me, “I love your vision. As you’ll soon learn in development work, about 5% of the overall effort is the vision and 95% is the delivery and refinement of that vision. No exaggeration here!” I had a feeling that he was right, but could do nothing to refine the vision than to brace …
Obviously, there are some health concerns whenever one is traveling to the tropics, to say nothing of the specific connotations with sub-Saharan Africa. I think people actually have so many fears about traveling to Africa—or loved ones traveling there—because they don’t understand the health concerns. It’s just a place with a lot of diseases we can’t count or wrap our temperate-clime heads …
It was hot the day we arrived in Adaklu Helekpe, a small town in the Volta Region abutting Adaklu Mountain, said to be the tallest free-standing mountain in Ghana. We came first by tro-tro to Ho, then took a shared taxi the rest of the way to Helekpe, after being informed that the town we originally intended to visit had …
I once wrote a poem to encapsulate my study abroad experience that began with the words, “What did we expect to find in Ghana?” That rings as true now, finding myself plodding along these same pedestrian-hostile streets I knew so well two years ago. What did I expect this time? What can I expect from Ghana, even having lived here before? Heat, …
What do we mean when we talk about “postcolonialism” or “postcolonial cultures”? It’s a fair question, and one we get asked fairly frequently. It’s also a key aspect to what we’re trying to accomplish with this project, and one that requires a little bit of explanation. Postcolonialism refers to a branch of several disciplines (literature and ethics among them) which focuses on …
The day we did our fundraising photoshoot, we also asked our closest friends and family to be filmed answering three questions for an interview-style video we hoped would showcase our humanity and support system. We wanted our loved ones to be candidly honest in their explanations of what we’re doing, who we are, and their hopes and concerns for the project. …
One of the most common questions we’ve received since unveiling Untold International is about the significance of our logo. I’m pretty proud of it, and I’m not sorry to say that there is quite a bit of meaning behind it. Brady designed it himself, and the image you see is the first image he sketched out–but a lot of thought went into …
We are starting a library in Ghana. That’s what we thought when we launched this crazy crowd-funding campaign and began researching how best to prove our sanity to our families. Establishing anything in another country is audacious—far from the transient backpacking forays I’m used to—but apparently it wasn’t big enough. Kaitlyn and I sat down with an old family friend of …
We are incredibly blessed to have creative and talented friends who are generous and gracious enough to donate their time and gifts to help us raise money. Jennie and Matt are two such people. They’re kind, funny, extremely intelligent, and hard-working–not to mention very loving (of us and each other!). When I approached Jennie about donating pictures for our campaign, …
Every once in a rare while, when searching for one’s purpose for the next era, we can actually get a very clear glimpse of what we are supposed to do. Sometimes it makes perfect sense, ie. “Yes, I have been voicing my opinion on the internet for years now; it makes sense that I would go into politics this year” …
Untold International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. If you pay taxes in the US, your donation is tax-deductible.
