This Collegiate Women in Business (CWIB) feature is on a CWIB Chronicles writer herself: Abby Riggs. Abby is a freshman currently Business Undecided, and is CWIB’s newly-elected Philanthropy Chair. She is a dedicated woman to service, in which she will be going to Ghana once again this summer to teach and work with rescued child slaves. Her time and passion towards this is empowering.
When she was in middle school, she had went on a few mission trips and service projects through her church. A lot of the people in her church originated from Ghana, and they were some of the friendliest people she had ever met. Talking to them and hearing their stories back then inspired her to choose to go to Ghana the summer before her senior year of high school.
That summer, she went on a service trip to Ghana with the organization, Global Leadership Adventures. For three weeks, Abby taught at a school in a small village and worked with her team to build bricks for a new kindergarten class. Her team went on a day trip to My Father’s House, an organization that saves kidnapped boys in Analoga, where she met ten boys who were rescued slaves. These ten boys were from a slave ring from the lake, where currently about 12,000 slaves are. Hearing these boys’ powerful stories inspired her to return to Ghana this upcoming summer.
She has kept in touch with people over there who will be helping her out when she goes again this summer. Her connections will help her by driving her from locations and introducing her to people. Last Christmas, she raised about $750 through fundraising which gave a little boy 4 years of education.
This summer is a whole new experience compared to her last trip. She will be completely on her own, with no organization or team. The village she is staying at is right outside of Lake Volta, where the slavery is taking place. The conditions are rough with minimal electricity and transportation. She will be teaching at a school and staying at a hostile. Her plan and biggest goal is to interview the rescued slaves and other people around to write a book about the situation about slavery over there. This book would be focused on the ten boys she met in her past trip, and any other rescued slaves she meets. She hopes to have completed writing the book by the end of summer and then have it sent out for publishing.
She talked about how the slavery process works and what an unfortunate system it was to hear about. Masters will travel to houses and tell families they are looking for boys to work for them, and have the money sent to families. It sounds like a great idea to the families, however it is all a scheme. The boys are kept with their masters and do not return home. A lot of them have worms in their stomachs and have no clean drinking water. They typically work within the fishing industry, where the lake is not very deep so sometimes the boys are sent down to swim and untangle the fishing nets, where a lot of the times the kids get tangled in the net and drown. The only way the kidnapped boys are saved is to purchase one. Abby herself wants to buy one of the boys from the master this summer and take him to an orphanage center.
“I feel as if no one in America knows about the over 12,000 kids kidnapped and put in dangerous work zones in Ghana. I want to bring media coverage to it over here and that is why I am writing this book.”
A lot of people in the villages surrounding the lake support the system, since the slave system has been a tradition for so long and is how their businesses are kept running. It is a big source of their labor and income. If the villagers find out that Abby is there this summer specifically against the system, she could be in a very dangerous spot.
“There is a lot of self-doubt with this where I am not sure if I can do this, and getting closer to it makes it more real and scary. The conditions will be rough, I am not sure who else I will be there with, and I will stand out as a white and blonde girl, but this is what I really want to do and that is what keeps me going.”
She mentioned how the government and people over there do not have the resources to stop this tragic situation. Her goal is not to go over there this summer and put an end to the slavery. Instead, she aims to bring awareness to the issue over here in the United States and have people be inspired like her to fundraise to help or even make a trip to volunteer.
“So many girls have ideas in their head, and it is so easy to come up with a million reasons to not take action. I have had many moments of self-doubt to cancel my plane ticket and stay at home this summer to work a regular job. But I know that this is the time we have to go and travel to make an impact on someone’s life. We need to take advantage of our four years in college.”
Abby hopes that her work empowers other strong women to have the full confidence to do what they want. She found this opportunity through helpstay.com where she encourages others to look at and find any opportunity that stands out them. She is still fundraising for her trip, visa, food, and any other essentials during her trip. Her Go Fund Me link is here: https://www.gofundme.com/back-to-ghana. Any donation is appreciated to support her!