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Cekayla King had little concept when she departed for Ghana that she’d return nearly two weeks later with a totally modified perspective about her future.
King, who grew up in Glynn County and graduated in 2020 from School of Coastal Georgia, traveled to the West African nation in 2019 because of a scholarship she acquired by way of the LIFE program sponsored by the Brunswick Chapter of The Hyperlinks, Included.
King has since change into a neighborhood ambassador for this system, visiting space faculties and attending an annual LIFE occasion on the school to share her expertise.
She additionally accomplished her undergraduate diploma and commenced working for MAP Worldwide, a nonprofit group based mostly in Brunswick that gives medicines and well being provides to these in want world wide.
“It’s a full-circle second as a result of MAP is the corporate that supplied the medicines for us to tackle the medical mission journey,” King stated.
King is one in all many native college students who’ve benefited from the Hyperlinks Worldwide Overseas Affairs and Enterprise Empowerment (LIFE) program, which goals to show minority highschool college students to profession potentialities in overseas affairs and worldwide enterprise.
Margie Harris, a Hyperlinks chapter member who coordinates the LIFE program, stated she works intently with native faculties to decide on college students who will obtain this annual scholarship.
Scholarship recipients have to be college students who plan to enroll at CCGA for his or her undergraduate research.
Harris stated King is among the many LIFE program’s many success tales.
King can also be finishing her masters diploma in human assets administration at Troy College’s Brunswick campus.
The journey to Ghana impacted her deeply and altered her plans for the profession she would quickly embark on.
She stated she discovered loads throughout the time she spent in Ghana, and her eyes have been particularly opened to the variations between life there and her expertise rising up in Glynn County.
“You are taking a number of issues with no consideration, and while you recover from there you see how folks don’t have entry to issues that we will simply go up the road to get,” she stated.
Meals, medicines and different life requirements usually are not as simply accessible for a lot of households there as they’re for households in America, she stated.
King traveled with a number of companions, together with Shirley Wilson, a member of the Brunswick Chapter of The Hyperlinks, Included.
They visited a number of clinics in numerous elements of the nation, the place King met households and introduced donations, together with toys and meals.
“We began this LIFE program to encourage college students to develop an curiosity in worldwide and overseas affairs, and I believed this might be a terrific alternative for native college students who’re contemplating conventional careers to take a look at non-traditional careers and for them to actually take into account it wholeheartedly,” Wilson stated.
Earlier than the journey, King stated she didn’t know what to anticipate. She encountered and skilled variations in tradition and witnessed firsthand the numerous wants of some residents.
She returned house with a brand new perspective and a need to discover a job that may enable her to proceed this type of work.
She inspired native college students to attend the LIFE program on the school and discover the alternatives it will possibly present.
“After I went, it was primarily at first to tour the School of Coastal Georgia, to see what’s in my yard that I didn’t even understand,” she stated. “I hadn’t been capable of go to the dorms previous to that program or see the completely different buildings that they provide the courses in.”
This system additionally gave her a once-in-a-lifetime journey alternative that she values.
“The LIFE program is a key a part of the place I’m at present, and it actually helped me get right here,” King stated. “It’s actually been part of making me the one that I’m at present.”
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