In March of 2006, our group of nine women students representing Yale College's CCC and two CARE staff members embarked on a two-week journey to the west coast of Africa to visit CARE project sites in Sierra Leone. In sharing perspectives from our travels, we hope to enrich the understanding of a vibrant country and the important role agencies like CARE play in helping to achieve attainable yet challenging goals within the world's poorest communities.

Our visit incorporated eye-opening and wide-ranging experiences: we spent the night in rural villages and learned how community members use traditional forms of entertainment to teach each other about HIV/AIDS; we spoke to young ex-combatants in job training programs about how they hope to leverage newly taught skills to achieve economic independence for themselves and their families; and we heard Liberian refugees call for peace through song. We were struck by the recent progress Sierra Leoneans have made in rebuilding their economy, improving access to health services and education, and ensuring that their human rights are never again violated as they were over the course of the country's brutal decade-long war. We were also struck by the overwhelming challenges that Sierra Leoneans continue to face including corruption in government, lack of electricity and water, poor transportation infrastructure, and the difficulties posed by a generation of uneducated, unemployed youth that continues to migrate into Sierra Leone's crowded cities.

Our goals for this trip included strengthening Yale's chapter of the College Council for CARE, engaging in an educational exchange and dialogue with Sierra Leoneans and CARE staff, and raising awareness about development issues overseas in our own communities upon return. We hope that this site will inspire a continued dialogue on issues that we care about very deeply.