The Team

A photo of the team I will be traveling with. In addition to us there will be one Rotary member that will be leading us on the trip. Also, I wanted to plug one of my team members consulting group that she operates. http://www.rendahlconsulting.com/Welcome.html. She'll also be keeping some blog notes on the trip.

Amias Project-Throw Down Your Heart-Two Grammys

As part of our preparation the local Rotary district governor arranged for us to meet up with her daughter in law that runs a business here in Minneapolis. The business is part travel agency, part hand made African jewelry and handbags, and part field recording and production. The organization is called the Amias Project.

http://www.amias.org/

We met with the organization's founder Nicole and she was able to give us some great insight around traveling to Uganda and Ethiopia. In addition she mentioned that her business also did much of the field production for Bela Flek's (world renowned banjo player) most recent release Throw Down Your Heart which recently won two Grammy Awards for best contemporary world music and pop instrumental performance. Its a great album if your looking for some new music to add to your collection.

http://www.throwdownyourheart.com/

Welcome...

Hello All,
Welcome everyone and thanks for taking time to read. This April I'll be traveling to Uganda and Ethiopia for the Rotary International Group Study Exchange program or GSE as I'll refer to it. I've attached a link so you can read more about the program, but basically what it is, is an international good will exchange program for young professionals. The goal of GSE is to develop professionally through things like public speaking and networking, but its also an opportunity to interact with those in your vocation in another country. The website puts it much more eloquently so I'll leave it at that.
http://www.rotary.org/en/serviceandfellowship/fellowship/GroupStudyExchange/Pages/ridefault.aspx
This whole adventure started when a good friend of mine passed along a link on Facebook. A friend of her's had done a GSE to South Africa and when she saw that our local Rotary 5959 district was going to Africa she passed it along to me just knowing that I would be interested. It's personal brand at its best. She had me pegged that this would be somthing I would jump at and she was right. From that point on it was application completing, essay writing and interviewing. Then after a :30 min in person interview with 11 people in mid-September 2009 I got the call... I was in. From that point our group of 6 (5 team members and one Rotary member to lead us) have been meeting regularly and working on our presentation that we'll give multiple times while abroad. So the excitement continues to mount...