Community Engagement in Senegal (French Intensive)

Lac Rose got its name from the beautiful and distinct rose-tinted hue created from the Dunaliella salina bacteria that thrives due to the lake's high salt content. In some areas the lake has a salt content of up to 40% and is second only to the Dead Sea. Lining the lake in among the sandbanks you will see pink Samphire bushes and picturesque terracotta sand dunes.

This morning's service-learning activity will consist of helping salt collectors put away the salt in small bags or carrying salt from the lake to the ground via boat. The lake's color is most prominent in the dry season when the sun shines straight on it.

Known locally as Ndar, Saint Louis was the capital of the French Colony of Senegal from 1673 to 1902. It has also served as the capital to neighboring Mauritania.

Senegal has a large number of street children, known locally as Talibés. These children receive no formal education and are forced to spend much of their time begging for scraps of food and small change. As Quaranic students they receive just some basic Arabic learning and are sometime ill-treated and exploited by their Marabout (Quaranic teacher). This center is set up to help these children and as a care volunteer you have the opportunity to work at this center or participate in their activities.

The work at the drop-in centers involves four main areas; education, health care, sports and leisure and practical refurbishment or clean-up activities. Participants follow timetables in order to ensure that the children are exposed to these different areas on a regular basis, and can get involved with a variety of different activities from administrating health care to distributing food to the children. You may also want to help the children with activities such as brushing their teeth and washing their clothes, and just spend time with them drawing pictures, doing arts and crafts or organizing sport activities.

Senegal is home to around 160 species of bird life and is a bird-watcher's paradise. Today, you will visit one of the fantastic bird sanctuaries of the region. A boating tour of either Langue de Barbarie Sanctuary or Djoudj Park Sanctuary, depending on the season, is the best way of witnessing the various winged beauties of the area. Both sanctuaries are home to an abundance of migrant bird species such as: pelicans, Mocking Gulls, cormorants, Royal and Caspian Terns, egrets, teals, Lapwing Spurred Sandpipers, flamingos, herons, ibis and

The work at the drop-in centers involves four main areas; education, health care, sports and leisure and practical refurbishment or clean-up activities. Participants follow timetables in order to ensure that the children are exposed to these different areas on a regular basis, and can get involved with a variety of different activities from administrating health care to distributing food to the children. You may also want to help the children with activities such as brushing their teeth and washing their clothes, and just spend time with them drawing pictures, doing arts and crafts or organizing sport activities.

The work at the drop-in centers involves four main areas; education, health care, sports and leisure and practical refurbishment or clean-up activities. Participants follow timetables in order to ensure that the children are exposed to these different areas on a regular basis, and can get involved with a variety of different activities from administrating health care to distributing food to the children. You may also want to help the children with activities such as brushing their teeth and washing their clothes, and just spend time with them drawing pictures, doing arts and crafts or organizing sport activities.

Saly is a seaside resort area, located to the south of Dakar.

Mangrove replanting project

Médina quarter, Grande Mosquée, Musée Théodore Monod visit

La Maison des Esclaves visit, Djembe and local dance lesson

African Renaissance Monument, Marche Kermel, Deux Mamelles

The afternoon will be spent participating in sand painting activities. Sandpainting is the art of pouring colored sands, and powdered pigments from minerals or crystals, or pigments from other natural or synthetic sources onto a surface to make a fixed, or unfixed sand painting. Unfixed sand paintings have a long established cultural history in numerous social groupings around the globe, and are often temporary, ritual paintings prepared for religious or healing.

This evening we make the final entries in our Reflection Journal and share some of the most significant observations and perspectives that have taken shape in the course of our travel experience and how these may be most relevant for us all as we return home.

Throughout the program, we will set time aside time for discussion, guided reflection, and time to write reflections on self-discovery and what we have learned. "We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience" - John Dewey