Theater, photography and more: Experiment France 2008

 

During my visit to our program sites this summer, I was lucky enough to visit our Experiment France programs during the final days of their programs. The day before most of the France Experimenters left, culminated in a grand reception with photo exhibits from several of the photography groups and an enactment of Don Juan from the theater group. Needless to say, the caliber of the exhibit and of the presentation was outstanding. The theater group was tasked with playing Don Juan, in its original French. This is equivalent to having non-English speakers play Shakespeare in old English. The group practiced and practiced. With direction from their group leader, Carol Ann, and from the drama instructor, Jean Claude, they put on a marvelous show.

The photography groups were to explore how Asian culture had penetrated into French culture. Their task was to capture this multi-culturalism on film. They explored immigration issues in French culture and captured what they felt were images expressing this multi-cultural setting. Many of the students explained their photos in French the night of the exhibit.

One thing was evident from all the groups, the themes helped them explore French culture in a way they would not have been able to in a regular tour group. Their leaders and local counterparts pushed them to find the best within themselves. And, their fellow group members supported them through the language and cultural struggles.

Join me in celebrating the successes of our Experimenters in France 2008. View the YouTube videos of their exhibits.

Summer learning in Hokkaido

By Reagan Jackson, former group leader for the Experiment in International Living

For the last three summers, I have been a group leader taking kids to Hokkaido Japan through the Experiment in International Living (EIL). Taking a mixed group of kids aged 14-18 abroad for 4-6weeks is hard. Many of these kids have never been out of their home states, let alone across an ocean to a place that is truly, radically different. Some of them end up hating each other, some of them ended up falling in love – you just never know what is going to happen. It is exhausting, complicated and there is never enough time to sleep. But in all honesty it is the best job I’ve ever had.

I love it. Each trip with EIL is arranged differently, but the way mine has worked is that we spend a few days doing an orientation in Tokyo, then we fly north to Sapporo for 10-12 days of language training and city life, then off to our host community, a small town outside of Sapporo where we stay with host families for about 2 weeks. After a big Sayonara and Thank You party, we catch a ferry down to Kyoto for temple gazing and good shopping, then back on the bullet train to Tokyo where we wrap it all up.

Every year for that short amount of time, and subsequently for years to come it seems (as I still hear from them) I get to connect with these amazing, brave young people. We share this crazy adventure filled with inside jokes, embarrassment, joy, fear, homesickness, and a million firsts: first time seeing the ocean, first time getting poison ivy, first time climbing the steps of the water temple (Kiyomizudera), first time wearing a kimono, first time seeing Sapporo lit up at night from the top of Mt. Moiwa

World Day Against Child Labor 2008 – Education: The right response to child labor

World Learning joins the international community in supporting World Day Against Child Labor (WDACL), an annual event hosted by the International Labor Organization (ILO). This year’s theme, Education: The Right Response to Child Labor, strikes at the core of World Learning’s work in removing children from the worst forms of child labor. There are an estimated 165 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are involved in child labor, often working long hours in hazardous conditions. For these 165 million children, the answer to their future is access to adequate education.

World Learning has a long history of combating child labor through education. Our projects aim to provide children with access to quality and relevant education as a means to remove them from the worst forms of child labor. Maria Gloria Barreiro, Project Director for Wiñari, World Learning’s Child Labor project in Ecuador, stresses the importance of education in combating child labor: “providing children with accelerated education programs, like what we are doing in Ecuador, is what keeps them in school, providing new opportunities for out of school and overage children and eventually pulling their families out of the cycle of poverty.”

Azra Kacapor, World Learning’s Director for Children and Youth Programs, says that “the key to breaking the cycle of poverty is to create opportunities through quality education for relevant and contextualized economic empowerment and job skills training for children and youth.” World Learning’s Wiñari project in Ecuador makes the link between education, economic empowerment, and life skills training by providing indigenous youth with specialized agro-technical high school programs. To date, World Learning has removed over 3,000 children in Ecuador from child labor situations by enrolling them in specially designed education programs.

Read more about Wiñari and World Learning’s other Children and Youth Programs here, or read a series of recent posts on Wiñari from World Learning NOW.

NAFSA 2008

Written by Jessica Smyser

The NAFSA 60^th Annual Conference and International Education Expo took place in Washington, D.C. May 25-30^th 2008. NAFSA reports that more than 9,000 registrants from more than 100 countries attended this year. As a leader in the International Education field World Learning had a strong presence in the committee room, in the presentations, and on the exhibit hall floor.

Potential students, sending school partners and alums all came by to visit World Learning in the Expo hall where representatives from SIT Study Abroad, SIT Graduate Institute, International Development Programs and Constituent Relations were all in attendance to talk about World Learning’s programs.

World Learning’s annual (and highly-anticipated!) NAFSA reception was held on Tuesday, May 27. This year’s reception was co-hosted by National Geographic-Glimpse at the National Geographic Society Headquarters. Over 400 sending school representatives, alums, partners and friends attended this event which featured a “Share Your Story” area and roving “radio” reporters. Guests were encouraged to record their experiences abroad and share the importance of international education and exchange from a very personal perspective.

Coming Soon to Mongolia, Experimenters in yurts!

For the first time ever, The Experiment in International Living will be running a program in Mongolia. Chris Frantz, Deputy Director of the Experiment, recently returned from Mongolia, where he was helping organize the program, which is being run in partnership with SIT Study Abroad staff there.

The program, which is fully enrolled at 12 students, will focus on Mongolian arts, culture and life in nomadic villages. It will begin in Ulaanbaatar, the capital, with basic language training and an exploration of Mongolian arts and culture. Students will then move to the Steppes, where they will spend several days with Mongolian high schools students doing a service project at a school. They will also spend three days in the Gobi Desert and five nights living in a homestay with nomadic villages.

This program is the culmination of a years’ worth of work and is a great example of the ways in which our program units can partner to take advantage of the strong local networks that we have in place.

An Exchange of Hospitality and Pancakes

Jo Koski, a student currently studying abroad in Vietnam this semester, shares a story about learning to cook during her homestay in Can Tho. To learn more about the SIT Culture and Development program in Vietnam, please visit our website.

April 11, 2008

Its 5:00 in the morning and my alarm is infiltrating my dreams. My initial reaction is to shove it under my pillow to silence it and go back to sleep for another three hours, but I roll over and grudgingly nudge Caroline to wake up. It’s the last morning at our home stay in Can Tho, and we had a promise to fulfill. I found my way out of the tangled web of mosquito net I was in, fumbled for my glasses, and felt my way down the steep spiral case that led to the kitchen.

Earlier that week, Caroline and I had expressed our wish to learn some traditional Vietnamese dishes during our studying abroad experience. Co Cuc, our home stay mother, was ecstatic at hearing this and demanded we cook with her the following night. Not knowing what we were in for, we hesitantly agreed to the proposal and made mental notes to eat a big lunch before returning home. When we arrived home that night, Co Cuc ushered us directly into the kitchen where bowls brimming with ingredients waiting to be diced, mixed and cooked.Usually, either our home stay brother, Truong, or sister, Thao, would be home at this time to help with translations, but for some reason neither were to be found; we were going to be forced to learn in Vietnamese.

After surveying our materials and using hand gestures, we deciphered the fact that tonight we would learn the fine art of making Ban Xeo, the traditional Mekong Delta pancake. Co Cuc pointed to each bowl and pronounced the Vietnamese name slowly, allowing us to absorb the new names. Then it was time to begin. Handing me a big bowl, Co Cuc motioned to beat the eggs. Seeing that the eggs were smooth, she began alternatively pouring water and flour into the mixture, making a yellow paste. While I was beating the batter, Caroline was finely chopping the green onion, making a pile of little green “o”s. This was then added to the mixture, along with a little coconut milk. Not once did Co Cuc refer to a recipe; it was as though the process was as natural to her as waking up in the morning.

Join World Peacebuilders in June 2008

Part 1 of the CONTACT 2007 movie

As I watched the movie about CONTACT 2007 made by Dil Bhusan and sent all the way from Nepal, I became a little nostalgic. I miss all the 72 participants -I have been in touch with each and every one of them from their first inquiry to their campus arrival. I was happy to see them come and sad to see them go. Fortunately, nowadays we are only one click away and we have plenty of photos that captured the beautiful moments together.

But let me not get carried away by nostalgia and concentrate on the 2008 Group of Peacebuilders. Applications for the CONTACT program came in from 35 countries. Rich backgrounds, inspiring stories, determined personalities.

CONTACT, the Conflict Transformation across Cultures Summer Peacebuilding Program will take place June 1-20. For 3 weeks students from 30 or more countries, ages from 20s-70’s, who work in development, education, human services, mental health, peace, religion, government, and many other professions, will be immersed in experiential learning, skill development, and community building.

Now in its 12th year, CONTACT is an acclaimed program led by renowned faculty from around the world. CONTACT participants build mutual understanding and authentic relationships across the differences of identity, experience, and perception that keep us divided. Students practice the art of peacemaking, refine their skills, and explore the rich challenges of reconciliation and forgiveness. The learning community becomes a laboratory where participants make shifts in their own attitudes and behavior as they create a culture of peace, compassion, and tolerance. The group engages in conflict analysis, develops interventions and strategies for actions in situations of protracted conflicts, and practices skills of dialogue, mediation, training, and other essential tools of peacebuilding.

For participants who would like to expand their theoretical knowledge and practice base beyond the CONTACT Summer Program, CONTACT also offers a one-year distance learning Certificate Program in Peacebuilding. This includes two online courses and a very meaningful midyear seminar of 10 days in Rwanda, where the group meets to learn directly about post-genocide healing and reconciliation.

Certificate students are then halfway to a MA degree, which they can complete on campus or through a new low residency program.For an application form and additional information, please visit our website or write to us, or call 802 258 3433.

Teach your teachers well

Apologies to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but we all know you can’t teach your children well if you don’t teach your teachers well first. The proverbial apple never falls far from its tree. The Winari project in Ecuador recognizes this basic reality, as it works its way up the chain of change from students to teachers to parents and beyond. That’s why Friday they organized one of several 2-day workshops for 60 or so tutors who work in Winari’s after-school program. One fact that’s important to know: in Ecuador the school day for primary school kids ends at noon. For kids pressed into child labor, that means even if they do go to school for the morning, they might still end up working 5 hours at home or in the field or on the street before dinnertime rolls around.

To address this concern, Winari developed an after-school program that serves a dual purpose: on the one hand, it helps develop students’ non-academic skills by introducing art, drama, music, dance, and plenty of good old-fashioned play. On the other hand, it fills an afternoon with child-centered activities that might otherwise be taken over by far too many hours of hard, adult labor.

The tutor session was great fun, I have to say. Participants, mostly school teachers, came from the area of Cotopaxi in Ecuador’s sierra. They ranged widely in age from 23 or so to 50+. Some wore the beautiful traditional dress of the Cotopaxi Kichwa while other young men and women sported the latest urban fashion. For me, it presented a wonderful snapshot of modern Ecuador in one room. Teambuilding exercises, including a rather wild congo line, broke the ice, kept everyone awake, and modeled the kind of playful approach they want tutors to take with their kids in the after-school program.

It wasn’t all fun and games, though. The facilitator really pushed the teachers on their own capacity to teach and mentor the kids in their charge. “How many of you read a book a month?” he asked the group. No hands raised. “A book every two months?” No hands raised. He paused and then asked, “How do you expect your students to read when you don’t?” He went on to ask about how much these teachers write, and how well they listen. His point hit home: we can’t ask more of our children than we ask of ourselves and our institutions.

My Ecuadorian school visit schtick

So I’ve been in Ecuador just 3 days and have visited 5 schools. I think I now have my school visit schtick officially down. I’ve given 6 or so speeches, in one case with a microphone to the entire class of some 200 kids (in my lame Spanish). Interestingly, no one laughed at my jokes but they laughed at other things I said. Hmm. The littlest kids are entranced by my camera of course and gather round to see my pictures. Once today I got rushed so hard by a mob of first graders jockeying for the best view that they almost knocked me backwards off the bench! Let’s see, oh yeah, one 6-year-old girl inexplicably tried to tickle me under my chin. No worries. Then I danced a traditional Kichwa dance with a 7-year-old girl in front of a delighted crowd. One class asked me to sing, but I decided to hold onto my last shred of self-respect and had them sing me a song instead. If I’d known what to expect, I would have choreographed something elaborate, special effects, the whole shebang. Instead I just wing it and smile a lot and it seems to work fine! (or so I think….)

Vertical economies

The anthropologist, John Murra, many years back wrote about life in the Andes as a “vertical economy.” From before the days of the Inca empire through today people in Ecuador and other nations that straddle the spine of the Andes have moved fluidly from high mountain pastures to lowland fields, through cloud forest and rainforest, to make a living. Each zone, through a dizzying range of altitudes, had something to offer at different times of year and people moved through them or traded across them like we move through the aisles of supermarkets.

Times have obviously changed from this idyllic picture for most folks, but what hasn’t changed is the migration and movement of people up and down the Andes, east to west, west to east, to extract a living. Today it’s the ongoing Amazonian land grab, as one frontier town gives way to the next and more rainforest is cut down to make way for farms, towns, and oil fields. I’m thinking all this as I eat breakfast alongside uniformed oil company workers in the grim Amazonian frontier town of Coca. They’re all here from other parts, Quito or Guayaquil, to make a living from this industry that here in Ecuador has destroyed rainforest, driven indigenous tribes from their lands and in the past left behind enough toxic waste to cover an area the size of Rhode Island.

I recall some graffiti I saw on a wall in Quito yesterday that didn’t resonate then as it does now: “Con petroleo y el cobre, la gente mas pobre” (“With copper and oil, the people get poorer”…loses its poetry in translation).