MT CLAREMONT teenager Nicole Buttner may have returned from a four-month volunteer trip to Africa but her fundraising efforts will continue.
While in Ghana, Nicole met two locals who had just finished university and through the organisation HopAC (Hope For The African Child Foundation), raised money to build classrooms and send children to school.
She said the next goal was to build a $10,000 water pump in one of the villages.
“When we get the money together for the water pump, I want to go back,” Nicole said.
The former Methodist Ladies’ College student used the Projects Abroad opportunity as a stepping-stone to study medicine, which she will start in Townsville this year.
She initially wanted to spend the four months in a hospital but Project Abroad encouraged her to spend the first month in a hospital, two months in a childcare centre and the final month in a deaf-blind centre.
“You cannot really prepare yourself for it (in Africa) but I read lots of books and talked to lots of people,” she said.
“The culture is just amazing and everyone in the country speaks English.”