Category Archives: Year 4

Thoughts on my trip Part 3

Posted on by

As mentioned in my last blog post, I will be discussing my reflections on the my course abroad. Without further ado…

Overall, I am extremely happy with my decision to have applied and participated in this program. This program allowed me to experience a new culture and perspective which I hope to carry with me in my future endeavors. For one, the course taught me how to live more independently. Living in the dorm, I learned how to do seemingly simplistic tasks on my own, such as taking care of myself when I was sick from terrible food poisoning. While I had friends and TAs to help me through challenges such as food poisoning, I was still able to learn how to take care of myself at times when I thought I couldn’t on my own. As well, I learned more about myself throughout the trip. I learned about what I was comfortable with and what I was not, as well as what my own limitations are. For instance, throughout the trip, I always tried to take advantage of every opportunity and put 100% of my efforts into everything I did, whether it was an academic task such as research or a leisurely activity such as exploring the city. I left little time to give myself a break because I wanted to make the most of my limited time in Indonesia and did not want to waste time resting. Halfway through the course however, I quickly learned the importance of giving myself enough time to rest. At one point, I began feeling extremely fatigued. I could no longer concentrate on the work ahead of me and started getting headaches and nausea frequently. I finally took the time to take care of myself, such as making sure I had a nap on a long day or eating more healthy foods, and soon enough, my fatigue and sickness departed. While I still tried to take advantage of the new and exciting opportunities in Indonesia, I also remembered my own limitations and need for rest.

Throughout the course, I also learned about the importance of understanding a different culture. When my group was first trying to understand the success of the development projects within our village, it seemed that all the projects implemented were a complete success. However, it wasn’t until we gained the trust of the local villagers that we realized many of the projects implemented had their failures. We soon realized that within the local area, it is uncommon to speak poorly of others due to societal norms. While this may seem to be a positive trait, this proved to be a challenge when trying to assess the development projects because villagers were unwilling to provide constructive criticism on the failures of the projects. Had we not realized this, we would have had a very different assessment on the projects in our village. In this way, it is important to understand the context of the culture you are working in.

In addition, I learned about other implications of aid work throughout the course. For instance, I learned about the importance of clear communication between aid donors, designers, or implementers, and beneficiaries or partners. Within our village of Situ Gede, it was evident that little training or follow-up was prioritized throughout the development projects. In the case of the briquette making project, the IPB professor who designed the project was unaware that the local villagers did not use the technology beyond the one training workshop provided to them by IPB staff. IPB staff seemed to do little to initiate follow-up discussions on the development projects while local villagers were afraid to critique the projects because they did not want future development projects to be discontinued in the village. Thus, it is extremely important to maintain clear communication between stakeholders in order to better ensure development projects are successful and sustainable.

The course also taught me many other lessons, such as the importance of implementing initial needs assessment, of focusing on quality versus quantity, and the importance of addressing knowledge-practice gaps to name a few. Ultimately, I have realized the importance of undergoing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) within development projects and aid work in general. M&E by independent elevators is important to support existing and future aid projects because it seeks to discover whether vulnerable populations are actually getting the resources and help they need in an efficient, sustainable and culturally appropriate manner.  While there are limitations to M&Es, I hope to use the lessons learned from this trip in my future career path.

 

M&E in Indonesia Part 2

Posted on by

Welcome back to my blog! If you are tuning in, I hope you are excited to read about the next chapter in Indonesia because we are jumping right into it!

Within the first week staying at IPB in Bogor, we soon began learning about monitoring and evaluation. We learned in about an hour how to create problem trees and logical frameworks. Once this was covered, we learned about Monitoring and Evaluation in a Timely Response in detail. We also split up into groups and began observing development projects in rural villages which had been initiated by IPB. Many villages had several projects occurring at the same time so each trip we took to a village took nearly all day or several days. Personally, this experience on its own was very eye opening because I had never been directly exposed to rural poverty. It was humbling seeing how villagers lived day to day and seeing how they treated us with such generosity and kindness with the little they had.

Once we visited all the villages, it was time to decide which group and village we would work in for the remainder of the term. I decided to work in a nearby village called Situ Gede with several other group members. As a group, we decided to focus on three projects in the village, namely briquette making, taro processing, and microfinance. Within our group we each focused on one of the three projects. I predominantly focused on briquette making, which involved manually making rice husks into briquettes using the technology provided by IPB. This project was particularly interesting because of the failures our group discovered in the design and implementation of the project in the village. For instance, one of the major design flaws in implementing the project in Situ Gede was that the village did not have many rice fields, which meant that there were little rice husks available. Thus, rice husks had to be imported from other nearby villages, adding to the cost of the briquettes, which ultimately was one of the various reasons that led to the failure of the project.

Throughout the month, our group would visit and interview various people involved with the three chosen projects, speaking local villagers and IPB professors who were involved in the design or implementation of the project. We also visited nearby villages of similar environments and socioeconomic status in order to assess the effectiveness of the results of each of the projects. Moreover, other research consisted of online research from scholarly articles and papers. At the end of the month of May, each group presented their evaluation of the projects of their given village. We presented to a range of people, from IPB professors to local village leaders and everyone in between. It was extremely interesting to listen to the responses from the local IPB professors and villagers, as well as listen to the other groups discuss the projects within their villages. In general, it was fascinating reflecting on the various effects of development projects within the villages we worked in.

Stay tuned for my next post as I reflect on the course as a whole!

Studying in Indonesia! Part 1

Posted on by

This past May was one of my most memorable experiences at school – well, it wasn’t exactly at UBC, it was in Indonesia! Prior to hearing about an opportunity to study abroad, I had never really thought about studying in Indonesia. However, throughout my third year, I often heard about the study abroad opportunity in Indonesia hosted by a professor at UBC. I began to learn more about it and the more I learned, the more interested I became in actually attending the field study. Essentially, the study abroad opportunity was to be led by Professor Christopher Bennett, a food and resource professor at UBC who specialized in the monitoring and evaluation of development projects. Before I knew it, I had written up my application for the program. After what seemed like a long wait, I finally heard back from the program coordinators – I was accepted! Even as I was packing my bags to go to Indonesia late April, I still wasn’t exactly sure of everything I was getting myself into. I knew the general content of what we would be going through but I have had little experience in South East Asia, particularly in a lesser economically developed country. Regardless, I was extremely excited to go on a new adventure!

Upon the first few days of arrival in Jakarta, I was taking in as much as I could of the culture and my surroundings. I went site-seeing around the city with a classmate I came with, which was exciting and also a bit of a culture shock. Being a person of mixed background, Polish and Chinese, my looks definitely take after my Polish side, which basically means I look Caucasian to most people. In Indonesia, walking around the city or even just doing simple tasks like grocery shopping somehow became an event. This was because wherever I went, I managed to attract attention from locals, locals wanting to take photos of me, with me, or locals just outright calling me a foreigner, pointing and staring at me. Although I knew that the locals meant no harm and for the most part likely rarely encountered a foreigner, I always felt uncomfortable around the unwanted attention. I suppose for me, it felt as though I was an animal in the zoo, an exhibit, something for people to stare and pose with rather than a real person. Throughout the month I studied there, I never got used to it, I always felt out of place. Despite this, it was still so interesting exploring Jakarta, and later Bogor.

After a few days in Jakarta, we bussed to one of the more interior cities, Bogor, where we stayed for the majority of the trip. We lived in the dorm at one of local universities, which was conveniently located next to a variety of street markets. For me, this was a completely new experience since I had never lived on my own prior to that, I have always lived at home with my parents instead of on campus at UBC. At our dorm, we also had 3 meals 5 days a week catered to us, as well as a fleet of about 7 cars for groups of students use to get around campus and into the city – mainly for academic purposes of course. We were so spoiled!

On the same day we moved into our dorm, we got introduced to the local academic staff and students who we would be working with over the next few weeks. And so the next part of the adventure began, the academic adventure of monitoring and evaluation!

To be continued…! Stay tuned!

Nutrition in Emergencies

Posted on by

Food and nutrition in emergencies! This definitely sounds like an important topic to most people, but what does it actually mean? This semester, I have had the privilege of taking FNH 490, a course which discusses and analyzes this exact issue. Interestingly enough, I signed up for this course on the very last day students could sign up or drop courses. A friend described the course and I really took an interest to it. After a few hours of internally debating whether it was a sound decision to take the course, I decided to sign up, not really knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. Low and behold, it has quickly become my favourite course of the term and I could not be happier with my decision to take the course.

The course theme is, of course, nutritional issues admist emergencies. I have learned about a variety of topics within this umbrella topic, such as malnutrition indicators and the range in types of interventions implemented worldwide during emergencies. Perhaps the most interesting part of the course though has been discussing fields and issues related to nutrition and emergencies, such as HIV and AIDS, monitoring and evaluation, food security, as well as maternal, infant and child nutrition. For instance, while learning about HIV and AIDS, I learned about the importance of ensuring food security and adequate nutrition. This is because antiretroviral drugs taken by someone HIV+ may need to be taken with food several times a day. If this person is food insecure or not able to meet their nutritional requirements, this can adversely affect the effectiveness of the antiretroviral drugs, and thereby adversely affect the individual’s health.

Furthermore, I have learned about the importance of WASH techniques within emergencies. WASH stands for “Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene.” Understanding and implementing WASH techniques may seem like common knowledge but it was interesting learning about the specific details as to why it is important and how it can be implemented in emergency situtations. For instance, our class learned about the “Tippy Tap” intervention, which entails putting together simple, commonly found items in order to develop a safe, reliable handwashing station that can be used by children and adults alike. In doing so, health benefits, such as decreased risks in the spread of diarrhea, can be reinforced and promote wellbeing.

In this way, the course has deepened my appreciation for the field of food security and has also taught me new connections that food security can have in various fields which may seem somewhat unrelated at first glance.

Lest We Forget

Posted on by

This last Remembrance Day was one of my most reflective Remembrance Days to date. The main reason is likely due to one of the courses I am taking currently: Polish Literature. When I first signed up for the course, I expected to learn about various famous Polish writers and film artists, reading various texts and watching films relating to Polish culture. While the course has brought up work from some popular artists, it has also brought up works that are less well known and has had a main focus on the Holocaust and the atrocities of World War II. Learning about this has really made me appreciate just how lucky I am to live in Canada in the 21st century. I know this feeling should be a given, but I never fully understood or wholly appreciated it until now, especially on Remembrance Day of all days. I have learned about the complexities between Polish and Jewish relations, Soviet and Russian relations, as well as the lasting impacts of war on survivors. Some of the texts we have read have been outright disturbing and heartbreaking, challenging to read let alone analyze, but each new text I have read has brought me to a more humbled place. Especially given that my father is from Poland, this course has been an absolute privilege to take as I have learned and continue to learn more about my culture, history and how it effects political actions of today.  Moving forward, I hope to use the skills I have gained, such as cultural sensitivity and critical analysis, for areas in food security and food sovereignty. These skills are important to have because food security and food sovereignty take into account one’s choice and preference for food which are often highly related to one’s culture. Food policy is also a topic than can be related to culture and the existing political relations between countries. In this way, my Polish literature course has taught me so much more than I expected to takeaway and I feel so blessed to have taken it.