Two days before heading to the Amazon, 15-year-old Fergus resident Emma Ballantyne was busy packing. In fact, she had just come home from winning silver with Centre Wellington Mohawks at a provincial lacrosse tournament in Whitby.
Ballantyne left on Aug. 7 for a two-week trek into the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador with the social empowerment group Me to We.
Landing in Quito, Ecuador, Ballantyne said she is excited to be at the equator line – a monument marking the divide between the Northern and Southern hemispheres – and to visit markets before travelling into the rainforest.
The group will be going into the western edge of the Amazon Rainforest to stay at Minga Lodge.
There, she and the other youths on the group will be helping to build a sustainable development project. Ballantyne didn’t know what type of project she would be working on, but mentioned the group has worked on building schools and digging wells in the past.
“I’m really excited about kind of seeing … the rainforest so I think it would be cool to see all that stuff,” she said.
She had intended to go to Costa Rica to obtain a Spanish language credit in order to lighten her academic load for Grade 10 in September. But the trip was cancelled when there were not enough sign-ups.
“I was really bummed about it,” she said.
She was encouraged to find another trip by late friend Aleska McWhirter, who recently passed away after battling a brain tumor.
“She was saying (I had) to go do something, I was going to go show her the pictures after,” said Ballantyne.
Encouraged, she did some research and found the Me to We volunteer trips, which also travel to Kenya, Tanzania, Nicaragua and India.
This trip will be an entirely new experience for Ballantyne. She explained she went to a resort in Cuba and a two-month Grade 8 French exchange in Versailles, but this volunteer trip will be a first.
“I thought it would be really cool because it was so different the climate … and different scenery really,” she said.
The Me to We website states the group will weave crafts, learn about traditional culture, hike the rainforest and explore the plant, insect and animal life of the area.
It also explained the group will be learning about indigenous rights, education, deforestation, access to clean water and women’s rights – something that struck a chord with Ballantyne.
“I’ve always been really interested in women’s rights,” she said.
“I was talking to one of the Me to We people … they were saying that (women’s rights) would be brought up a lot, like the struggle they have to be equal in different parts of the world.”
Ballantyne added that this type of travel is important to her.
“It’s better knowing that you’re not just going somewhere just because you can, it’s actually making an impact on the world too,” she said.
“You not just going to have fun, you’re going to have fun and be able to go somewhere, but you’re also doing something meaningful.”
