King City girl joins Leaders Today to help build a school in India
By Bill Rea

Jocelyn Dahme can hardly wait for her trip to India in July, under the auspices of Leaders Today.

There's a lot of humanitarian work to be done in India, and a 16- year-old King City girl just can't wait to get at it.

Jocelyn Dahme will be spending three weeks in July in India, travelling under the auspices of Leaders Today, an organization founded by young brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger, and associated with Free the Children, an organization Craig established in 1995.

Dahme will be gone from July 3 to 24. For part of her time in India, she will be helping to build a school near Delhi, in a place called Udaipur, in the northern part of the country.

She said she first heard about the program when the brother of a friend of hers took a trip to Kenya. Having always been interested in India, she consulted their Web site, hoping to find an opportunity. There was not trip to India planned at first, but later learned that one was in the works.

"I signed up immediately," she said.

There was a process she had to go through before being selected. It included a 20-page application and writing a 500-word piece on why she wanted to go. There was also a phone interview, during which she was asked things like how she thought she would fit in with a group and interact with others

Jocelyn Dahme is selling these T-shirts to help finance her trip to India.

Her mother, Susan Collins, also looked into the organization, and she liked what she saw. "I was very impressed," she declared.

Seeing India has been a big item on Dahme's life's to-do list.

"I think it would be amazing to go," she said enthusiastically. "It would be an amazing thing to do in an amazing place."

"I just want to do something to help," she remarked, adding India is an ideal place in which to do that. "It has such a strong culture."

The trip will include a week of taking part in a leadership program, and the other two weeks will see her helping with the building of the school and interacting with people in the country. "Sticking a shovel in the ground, making the cement, digging the foundation, so it's pretty involved," she commented.

She added there will be a couple of days for sightseeing.

As well, she said she's going to be involved in helping to set up a Free the Children program there. One has been going in Kenya for about 10 years, and they are also set up in other countries too.

Dahme will be travelling with a group of about 22 people from all over North America, including a few from the Toronto area. "It's mainly North American, but I think it's cool it's an international thing," she observed.

The Grade 11 student at Aurora High School expects to gain a great deal from the experience.

"I'm going to learn a lot of stuff I can bring back," she commented. "I want to raise awareness about it. It's the whole global community thing."

Dahme has been taking some steps to prepare for her trip, including learning some Hindi. But she also observed that India has 44 official languages. "It's kind of hard to know what you should learn," she said.

This will not be her first trip abroad on her own. When she was in Grade 8, she was involved in a student exchange trip to France for two months. She's been on other long trips with her family as well.

"We're sort of used to different cultures and languages," she said.

"It's great, at this age, I have the opportunity to go off and go to India pretty much on my own for three weeks," she reflected.

"It's a reflection of how small the world is now," her mother commented.

Dahme has figured the direct cost of her trip is going to be about $5,000, with roughly another $500 added for things like inoculations, appropriate clothing ("It's going to be really hot," she said) and incidentals. She and her parents have contributed some of that, and she is personally taking responsibility for raising $2,500. She was able to collect almost $700 of that from her summer job last year, and she has made Tshirts relating to India, which she's selling to raise more.

These T-shirts have the message "Timeless" across the front.

"We are one," she explained. "We're all community. We need to be able to think about the past to be able to think about the future, so it's timeless"

As well, the T-shirts have little maps of India near the bottom.

The sales of these shirts are spreading by word of mouth.

"I am happy to know that each time I sell an India shirt, that more people are aware of the situation in India,and I am honoured that they choose to support me," she stated.

She added she's been in contact with the King City Lions in an effort to drum up support.

Anyone interested in supporting this effort can reach Dahme at (905) 833- 2440, or by e-mail at chalkboardromance@hotma il.com