A Pre-Departure Wrap-up
Published by Trevor Whitney on Sunday, August 5, 2007 at 5:46 AM.
So my month of training has finally come to an end. It’s been an intense month crammed full of frameworks, case studies and diagnostic tools; however, don’t let the intensity and picture below fool you into thinking we’ve been sitting in a classroom learning a la university lecturing style. Over the past month Levi has had us doing all kinds of interactive learning, even sending us all over Toronto to interview people on the street.
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Most days start off at 9am EWB time at the U of T, by which I mean we show up around 9:10 and start around 9:20. Then we dive into sessions about rural livelihoods, technology diffusion, power and privilege, or one of many other topics. Most of the time we’ll start off with some open discussion and then break into smaller group for some sort of activity and then bring it back together to present or just share some key thoughts. We’ve also had some guests such as past overseas volunteers and some of the national office staff come in and run sessions.
A couple weeks ago were sent out on to the streets of downtown Toronto with the mission of figuring out whether short term money lending services such as Money Mart payday loans and pawn shops were a step into poverty, or a step out of poverty. The main objective was to practice information gathering skills by conducting semi-structured interviews with people on the street. We were all definitely “out of our comfort zone and into our learning zone.” You start off with this idea about how you’re going to go through a logical series of non-leading questions to figure it all out. Then halfway through saying, “Hi there do you have a moment to answer a few questions?” your brain gets the equivalent of “the blue screen of death” and when all is said and done you have no clue how these services are related to poverty.
We also got some more interviewing practice while wandering around a Zambian village (St. George street) and talking to local farmers (national office staff who sometime had difficulty recalling the persona they were suppose to be taking on). This time the activity was based around the sorghum project being undertaken by CARE Zambia. The infamous sorghum is a cereal crop that is much more drought resistant than maize, which is almost exclusively grown in Zambia. All the characters were based off of actual farmers who were interviewed by a past overseas volunteer.
Last but certainly not least, there are Parker’s sessions… Direct quote from Parker when asked to describe his pre-dep sessions: “I spew a bunch of information at them, ask them really hard questions, and then give them a tough assignment that they don’t have enough time to do.” I can’t really argue, but they always acted as a good reminder about how much there is for me to still learn, and pushed me to take it upon myself to learn as much as I could.
It’s been a really great learning environment. With such a wide variety of backgrounds everyone brings something new to the table. Boris just finished his PhD on something related to fuel cells; Alanna is an elementary school teacher with a degree in fine arts; Nina has been working in Fort MacMurray for the past four years; Heather has spent a few months in Uganda and has been working for Stantec in Ottawa for several years; Thulasy was co-president of the EWB Calgary Professional chapter this past year; Sarah is a past overseas volunteer with EWB who has been working in Hamilton for a bit; and Kim and Simon, like me, have just graduated from University.
As good as it’s been over the last month, it’s time to move on. I know there’s still a lot more I could learn about agricultural practices and farmer decision making, but I also feel like there’s only so much you can learn about Ghanaian farmers in a UofT classroom. I can’t wait to hit the ground, do some hands on learning, and see how my current thoughts on development and agriculture in Ghana play out in the real world.
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.jpg)
Most days start off at 9am EWB time at the U of T, by which I mean we show up around 9:10 and start around 9:20. Then we dive into sessions about rural livelihoods, technology diffusion, power and privilege, or one of many other topics. Most of the time we’ll start off with some open discussion and then break into smaller group for some sort of activity and then bring it back together to present or just share some key thoughts. We’ve also had some guests such as past overseas volunteers and some of the national office staff come in and run sessions.
A couple weeks ago were sent out on to the streets of downtown Toronto with the mission of figuring out whether short term money lending services such as Money Mart payday loans and pawn shops were a step into poverty, or a step out of poverty. The main objective was to practice information gathering skills by conducting semi-structured interviews with people on the street. We were all definitely “out of our comfort zone and into our learning zone.” You start off with this idea about how you’re going to go through a logical series of non-leading questions to figure it all out. Then halfway through saying, “Hi there do you have a moment to answer a few questions?” your brain gets the equivalent of “the blue screen of death” and when all is said and done you have no clue how these services are related to poverty.
We also got some more interviewing practice while wandering around a Zambian village (St. George street) and talking to local farmers (national office staff who sometime had difficulty recalling the persona they were suppose to be taking on). This time the activity was based around the sorghum project being undertaken by CARE Zambia. The infamous sorghum is a cereal crop that is much more drought resistant than maize, which is almost exclusively grown in Zambia. All the characters were based off of actual farmers who were interviewed by a past overseas volunteer.
Last but certainly not least, there are Parker’s sessions… Direct quote from Parker when asked to describe his pre-dep sessions: “I spew a bunch of information at them, ask them really hard questions, and then give them a tough assignment that they don’t have enough time to do.” I can’t really argue, but they always acted as a good reminder about how much there is for me to still learn, and pushed me to take it upon myself to learn as much as I could.
It’s been a really great learning environment. With such a wide variety of backgrounds everyone brings something new to the table. Boris just finished his PhD on something related to fuel cells; Alanna is an elementary school teacher with a degree in fine arts; Nina has been working in Fort MacMurray for the past four years; Heather has spent a few months in Uganda and has been working for Stantec in Ottawa for several years; Thulasy was co-president of the EWB Calgary Professional chapter this past year; Sarah is a past overseas volunteer with EWB who has been working in Hamilton for a bit; and Kim and Simon, like me, have just graduated from University.
As good as it’s been over the last month, it’s time to move on. I know there’s still a lot more I could learn about agricultural practices and farmer decision making, but I also feel like there’s only so much you can learn about Ghanaian farmers in a UofT classroom. I can’t wait to hit the ground, do some hands on learning, and see how my current thoughts on development and agriculture in Ghana play out in the real world.
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