You will read a few articles that don't seem to relate to the real world and then you will go on your internship. When you start your posting you will fall into what you are doing. While you are there you may remember to blog...which you are supposed to do every week. The prof will comment on these blogs. Some comments will make sense, and some will be 'yah yah whatever'. When you get back you will have to read all these blogs over again...in light of the readings that we started with that didn't make sense so you forgot about them. This is harder than it sounds. After that we will sit around and talk about our internships and what you learned. Out of this a few stories from your internship will stick out. That is what is here: stories that stick out.
In DEVS310 you are going to do work. No...really. This isn't like vacation at all! The first question is where to go. You likely want to go to some other county. This can be huge, but really, don't forget that Cool Things Happen Close to Home as well. If you are going to travel, and I can not stress this enough, look after the details. When it comes to international travel Paper Counts. Once you have sorted the details and you get where you are going, be there. I'm serious. Being there is awfully hard when you walk around in a place where you are not comfortable with a plane ticket sized Eject Button tucked under your mattress.
Every year students get things stolen. So...be careful. I'm not saying this for your benefit. You can always get more stuff. I'm worried about the people who rip you off. Really...you have to Watch Your Shit. When you do get there, wherever there is, you will have to find your way around. This means that you will leech on the good will of folks you just met. Not good. You should learn to look after Transport on your own.
In every trip there are times when you just kick back and have fun. These are very important. When in Mexico Sarah visited Einstein's with her younger brother..where she learned not to body surf half baked Einstein Lives. Christina, for her part, learned to love salsa while Alison learned a lot about Those tricky Lao boys! Really, and this counts for many aspects of work, some times the best things happen when you learn to Embrace the Random.
In this course you travel in Canada or outside. You are away from home. You meet people. You make friends...and every year at least one student builds a relationship that goes far beyond a friendship. This brings us to the topic of love, sex and relationships. Going the other way, when you go away you find that you learn that you are not the person who left...you wind up leaving home in a way that is hard to dial back. When you think about these trips you figure that most of the stress will be when you are gone. Yes, being Homesick can be nasty, but this is not the only time you may suffer. Coming home can be just as hard. Trip hangovers suck worse in part 'cause you don't see it coming. Oh yes...you might also bring home something you didn't go there with.
Every student on 310 works in an organization somewhere. Some 310 student's internships turn into jobs. When that happens you get to try and organize volunteers. That is when you learn that volunteers sometimes flake. Many 310 participants get to see what the world looks like from the perspective of an NGO. One of the areas that is really important is Donor-NGO relations.
Most students who start this course who can go overseas have dreams of exotic work placements where they can work with local activists in real communities. Things don't often work out that way. One of the ways this can break, is that the 'authentic locals' who you very rarely meet keep their gringas in the back room. A second, and nasty, way that this can go is that you wind up being a small part of a big system that inflicts needless harm. Their lives, our convenience
In this line of work you run into all sorts of ethical questions. It is easy to say that it is important to value others' traditions. It is an entirely different reality when you see first hand that How other people do things may result in needless death. In development it should be easy in this work to say whose benefit counts right? Obviously those on the receiving end should. Not so simple. When people are making donations, they do so for a reason. This brings us to the situation where you worry about petting donors vs. helping others.
In development we often write for people in offices about lives that are lead...well...not in offices. At times programs that are doing good work in the field do not meet the expectations of those in offices. You see, there is The truth and the truth. And finally. Just about everybody who enters this course wants to make a contribution. Every now and then, the work you do will get http://www.jasperbooster.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1175300 noticed.