Image source: Anna Strahs Watts
Welcome to part two of our Ripple Effect interview with Anna Strahs Watts, blogger, gluten free baker and avid traveler. To learn more about Anna and her amazing adventures, visit her blog A Girl and Her Backpack, where she chronicles her experiences overseas and how they have changed her perspective on the world in which we live.
Image source: Anna Strahs Watts
Welcome back to our interview series, The Ripple Effect. The Ripple Effect explores the emotional impact of volunteer travel and its lasting effect on people’s lives. Today we’re speaking with Anna Strahs Watts, blogger, baker and avid traveler. Anna sold the gluten free bakery she built from the ground up to go on a month long volunteer trip to Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Her blog, A Girl and Her Backpack, chronicles her experiences overseas and how they have changed her perspective on the world in which we live. Please check back in tomorrow for part two of our interview with Anna Strahs Watts.
Image source: Vietnamholidays.cc
After writing yesterday’s article about the Lewis family, I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact volunteering can have on families with children. The typical family vacation, especially if said family happens to include a teenager, is often rife with stress. Maybe the kids don’t want to go, or they’re moody and difficult. Every car ride is punctuated by a hundred are-we-there-yets. The Chevy Chase-style Big Ben/Parliament rotary tour comes to mind. Family vacations are supposed to be quality-time adventures. They’re supposed to end with everyone feeling closer, happier, more unified and refreshed. The trouble is, most typical family vacations don’t end that way at all.
Image source: Cloudforestschool.org
When I was 17, fresh out of high school and raring to go, Costa Rica was just one of about 50 different countries I wanted to visit. I grew up in a privileged suburb of Boston and was expected to head off to college alongside the rest of my graduating class. At the time, it wasn’t quite as fashionable to spend a year abroad. It was the kind of choice kids made who hadn’t applied to college, couldn’t pay for it, or otherwise didn’t have much direction. Even though I lived in a fancy suburb, my family had fallen on some tough times and I suddenly found myself in the “couldn’t pay for it” college category. I look back now and can’t understand how anyone pays for college but at the time it was a real blow. After busting my hump for four years with a singular focus—making high honor roll every semester, doing a bazillion extra-curriculars, and then getting into my top choice school—I was piping mad that money was holding me back. I was completely unable to put my situation in perspective. Never mind the millions of children in the world who get zero education, I deserved college. It was my right!