Fall 2010, eight college students and myself from the Bay Area in California studied abroad in Burkina Faso in West Africa. There we took courses in digital photography, African French Literature, economics for developing countries, studied the French language, and participated in civic engagement.
The program was initiated by Michael Kevane, an Economics Professor at Santa Clara University in Northern California. The idea to get students involved in a program like this came from his philanthropic work in the region to increase literacy rates. He established a non-government organization called Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) that sponsors a total of 15 libraries in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda.
