The Journey That is Life

I am about to complete my final course for the International Community Development Certificate. It has taken a few years but it has been an enjoyable journey. The last time I took a course I was working in Abu Dhabi. I am now working in Accra, Ghana. I am looking forward to exploring the issue of Children and ICD while being in a developing country. Living in Ghana has certainly been an incredible experience that has allowed me to deepen my understanding of the ICD world. I am teaching at an international school, however I have been volunteering at a local library and I try to engage with the local community as much as I can. Let the journey continue...

Life has changed a bit...

Although most of the information in my first post is still relevant, there is one significant change I have recently made. I am now working and living in Abu Dhabi. I am teaching at an international school and thoroughly enjoying my experience. I am excited to incoprate the learning I will be doing here into the remaining International Community Development courses.

International Community Development Intro Blog

My name is Rachelle and I am a teacher at a Calgary Charter school. I am in my forth year of teaching and have been enjoying it immensely. The past two summers I have had the opportunity to travel to Uganda, Africa to volunteer in various capacities. I have worked at an orphanage, helped build an aids clinic, assist a women with her dream of setting up a chicken coup in order to make money selling eggs, worked in a school developing resources for teachers and working with the teachers on how to implement them into their classrooms and taught in a rural community for 3 weeks. Although I had always been aware and attempted to educate myself about global causes, being up close and personal with the extreme needs of third world countries ignited a passion within myself to actually do something about it. Of all the experiences I had, it was the little things that seemed to make the most significant difference to people. Creating a number line out of string and paper for a classroom to teach negative and positive integers opened up a whole new realm of teaching to the dedicated educators (who had not been paid in 6 months) of the school I visited. The group of 8 people each contributing $10 to purchase 100 chicks and a bag of feed for a women to feel empowered to start her own business in order to feed and educate her children.

One of the other realizations I made was how many resources, support, and funding we had in our own school and how much is wasted and not appreciated. I brought my experiences back to my school, determined to continue making a difference for the people I had met. Out of this, I created an elective course students could choose to take focusing on Volunteerism. Part of this course is connecting students with the local community and opening up opportunities for them to get involved in. The other part of the course fouces around global causes. My students have started writing back and forth with the students I met in Uganda, have organized fundraisers to raise money for resources for the school, and have researched and found a cause to become passionate about and start thinking about things they can do, even if it is merely educating others about it. It has been a rewarding and an amazing experience that I am looking forward to expand and develop further.

This leads me to my goals for the course. I want to develop a foundational understanding of international community development which will allow me to incorporate more background information into my course. I want to learn about methods of community development so I can begin to make sustainable changes in the areas I am passionate about. Finally, I want this course to connect me or expose me to other opportunities I can get involved with. I see myself working within the area of international community development in the future, primarily in education and global citizenship and I believe this will provide a starting point to this becoming a reality.

Three resources I have found that I believe provide information about international community development are:

http://www.canadabridges.com/index.php

http://www.prajwalaindia.com/home.html

http://www.kiva.org/

Although these resources do not address international community development generally, I do believe they are examples of international community development in action and contributing to sustainable change in their respective areas and in the world as a whole.

Each source addresses a different issue from education (Canada bridges), micro-lending (kiva), to human-trafficking (prajwalaindia). These sources highlight the scope and diversity international development addresses, there is no one method or means to change.

I hope this blog post has succeeded in sharing who I am, why I am interested in international community development, and what I am looking forward to learning/understanding in this course. I look forward to sharing and hearing the reflections of other students and ultimately begin to see inspiration in all of us to make a difference.