This spring, 22-year-old Megan Ambrosino will have a one-way ticket to Ilorne, Nigeria in order to be the sole art teacher at an all-girls boarding school.
If teaching halfway around the world wasn’t a big enough challenge, the school has only the bare minimum when it comes to art materials, and Ambrosino isn’t sure what kind of access she’ll have in the city to purchase supplies. A month before her trip, she’s asking her community to donate any used or unused art supplies that could benefit the students she’ll be teaching.
“To be safe on my end, I figured I’m going to pack two checked bags — one with my stuff and one with everything I can get in for school. I don’t want to get in a position where I can’t do a project that I think could be really cool with them or having somebody send me stuff from home, because it’s really expensive to do that,” Ambrosino said.
Ambrosino, a Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake graduate and now an Albany resident, is looking for basic supplies, including colored pencils, crayons, paint and brushes. She said she’s been sending out letters to friends and family for assistance, and hopes to get in contact with A.C. Moore and Michael’s, but she still needs more. Any financial support could also help with the trip.
This Nigerian mission is not her first, and will not likely be her last. In 2009, she went to the Dominican Republic with a group of students in the Catholic Campus Ministry at SUNY New Paltz. She collected supplies for that mission, too, and began construction of a community center near the city of Jarabacoa. The following year, she went to Kenya with the Benedictine Sisters from Saint Joseph’s Parish in New Paltz to offer services for schools, soup kitchens, orphanages and health clinics. However, she said she only went to Kenya for two weeks and knew that wasn’t long enough.
“After that experience I was like, ‘OK, that was way too short of a time to spend in Africa.’ I wasn’t sure how, but I definitely wanted to go back at some point because I wanted to spend more time with the kids,” she said.
When she graduated SUNY New Paltz in December 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in visual arts education, she wanted to immediately find some work in Africa. She searched for different programs she felt comfortable with and, although it took longer than she had initially planned, she finally found the Notre Dame Mission Volunteer Program.
“When I finally found this one, I was like, ‘Alright, I have to do it,’” she said.
Ambrosino has also student taught in Australia, where she studied abroad, and in New York City. But her passion keeps pulling her towards Africa. All of the classes she’ll be involved in are taught in English, and although she will be going alone, she will be living at the boarding school.
“I’m not sure what kind of art projects they’ll be doing … how they’re going to express themselves, based on the experiences they’ve had in their lives,” she said. “I’m really hoping to focus on letting them tell their story and letting them show me who they are.”
Once she’s completed her mission, Ambrosino said she plans on bringing home some of the students’ artwork to show to her future classrooms.
“I want to bridge the connection of cultures through art. That’s my life goal,” she said.
To donate supplies, email Ambrosino at [email protected]. Monetary donations may be made to Notre Dame Mission Volunteer Program, 5405 Loch Raven Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21239, or at ndmva.org/donate/index.htm.