How does knowing people personally change the way we approach social impact issues? BYU student Alyssa Minor, travelled to Africa to learn the answer for herself. What began as a classroom assignment soon grew into an eight-month research project and became a life-changing international service-learning experience.
Through she had no personal ties to Ghana and had never left the country before, in the summer of 2023, Minor traveled to Ghana after a Ballard Center Social Impact Project (SIP) sparked her interest in orphan care and humanitarian challenges in West Africa. The project prompted her to pursue in-country research and ultimately taught her the value of loving the one through human-centered social impact work.
Being in the country and close to the people, allowed Minor to form personal connections not just with the complex social issue, itself, but with the people and children she met through the orphanages.
After returning from Ghana, Minor stressed the importance of loving and understanding the people of an affected population. Those relationships become the foundation of our future social impact efforts. Her experiences demonstrate how loving the one and working to know them intimately can change how we view and approach social impact work.
To learn more about loving the one and Alyssa Minor’s experience in Ghana, read the full article linked below.