Pathways Togo

April 9^th

I’ve recently been selected as the new Media Specialist for Pathways Togo.

What is Pathways Togo?

Pathways Togo is an NGO created by a group returned PCVs. It works to combine “international 

efforts to improve the quality of life for families in Togo through four programs that directly target our most potent, untapped resource: women.”

Pathways provides scholarships, life skills training, mentoring opportunities, and small scale community improvement grants.

Their scholarships are designed “to remove the barriers to education that often make the difference between opportunity and despair for an individual, and between equality and poverty for a nation.”

Then, through one-on-one mentoring and annual conferences, Pathways Togo increases the impact of those scholarships by ensuring recipients gain the confidence and skills they need to make the most of their education.

In selecting grantees, sponsoring mentors, and organizing conferences, Pathways works with local partners to ensure scholars receive support and guidance from within their own communities.

By helping women fulfill their potential, Pathways seeks to make a sustainable, just contribution to Togo's development.

Learn more at PathwaysTogo.org

So what is a media specialist?

I will be responsible for the photography and video of Pathways’ annual conferences for the scholarship recipients here in Togo. I will also be working with the board based in the United States to develop marketing techniques and hopefully create one large media based project.

In a nutshell.

One reason I’m so grateful for this opportunity, in addition to interacting with some of the brightest female minds in Togo, is that I’ve already found this position to ignite a small fire in me.

I’ve always found my resume to be a bit.. scattered. One glance at it and you’d have no idea what direction I was trying to take myself, which is honestly a pretty accurate inference. I’ve had jobs in advertising, physical therapy, hospitality, youth education, and media production. Now I’m in the Peace Corps. Since there’s no clear pattern emerging, thinking about what comes next scares the shit out of me.

Before I discovered my love of photography, I’d always admired the lives of international photographers -- travelers using technology to paint still-lifes of how they view the world in an effort to share their experiences and the stories of people and places they find along the way.

I’d always categorized it in my mind as a dream job that was never realistic. The kind that you keep on reserve to just pull out when someone asks that question,  “if you could do anything, regardless of money, what would it be?”. 

But lately, with this Pathways’ position, I’ve been thinking that perhaps it isn’t so unrealistic. I have a degree in advertising from the number one School of Advertising in the country. I fell in love with photography on my bike trip across a continent. I know how to work with youth. I have experience as a liaison between a group of media students and media professionals to create projects documenting social issues. Now I’m the media specialist for an NGO in a foreign country. I also feel I have an incredible understanding of people, a heightened sense of empathy if you will.

To me, it seems as though, unconsciously, my life is taking on a pattern. One I could have never planned for myself.

I’m not saying I’m on the road to being the next NatGeo photographer (although that’d be insanely awesome). I’m just no longer letting myself be constrained by the idea of “impossible”.

I have a new DSLR that I want to learn about inside and out. Just like a doctor knows the human body.

I want to use it for my work with Pathways and to also creatively document my life here in Togo.

I now plan on making a photography website.. which I can then link on here so you can actually see photos to match my blog…

And I’m even looking into master’s programs for photojournalism.

This next sentence is incredibly cheesy, but also very true:

Pathways is intended to provided a guiding light for the future female leaders of Togo, but in a way, it’s helped provide one for me as well.

And the work as even started yet! Let’s have some fun.

Here’s to realizing your dreams aren’t impossible,

Koumealo