On Saturday I went bright and early at 10 AM to an interesting discussion on ways maximize one's study abroad/service trip experience both while in the foreign country and upon returning.
We covered a broad range of topics within the study abroad experience, but one area we concentrated on was treating the experience as two-fold and beyond just academic goals:
1) Having a meaningful impact in the community in your host country (getting to the know the people, volunteering, learning about what issues are most prevalent there)
2) Bringing your experiences back to the United States AND using them to promote issues, raise awareness, take action, etc.
We discussed the challenge of coming to a country as an American and the stereotypes that accompany this label. One possible way of dealing with this challenge is to enter the country with an open mind and willingness to learn, no matter others have said about the region or what's shown in the news. The basic idea is to learn the culture first, THEN try to engage in the community and work towards substantive change that the community members themselves want.
There's this group the facilitator talked about, Exchange, that is devoted to gathering students recently arrived from study abroad trips and interested in channeling their experiences into something tangible and proactive. I don't have their website on me now, but I'll try to find it soon and post it.
Anyway, it was a cool workshop and I found it pretty helpful. I also went to one on Microfinance, but I'll leave that description for another time.
C'est tout!
Jon
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4 comments:
yay for making it at 10am!
you raise a really good point about going to a new country with an open mind. in a way, i think it's good that we know little at present about Belize (though that will be changing this Wednesday & in the coming weeks).
I think it would be a good idea to reflect before then on the areas in which we are a "blank slate" about Belize - ie. areas in which we have no preconceived notions - to keep that in mind when we go to BELIZE!
p.s. jon tu parles francais?
Oui, bien sur.
ah, je ne le savais pas! moi aussi (évidamment!)
What I'm really excited about is to see the difference in health services available in Belize and the U.S. I'm wondering whether the high rates of AIDS cases in Belize will be attributable to a lack of self services in Belize compared to the United States or if these services are the product of either cutural or socio-economic forces.
An economics study I read about in the NYT about 2 months ago has prompted this interest. The study purported that the cause of the high rate of HIV in Africa was the lack of high opportunity costs, meaning that part of these reasons Africans were not willing to take measures to prevent the spread of AIDS was because many did not believe it was likely that they'd live to an old age or have a promising future. The researcher who conducted the study showed that Africans were probably correct in their assumption since many were impoverished for most of their lives and would die at an early age. The solution to curbing the spread of AIDS in Africa, then, is to provide Africans with an opportunity to live a long, healthy life. What this means is not just handing out condoms, but also combatting poverty.
I am eager to see if the same analysis will hold in Belize.
TJH
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