Rattling the cage

Sometimes things just fall into place, without any conscious effort on one's own part - and that happened to be for this, the last official (i.e. will be marked) post, after 8 months of Beyond Borders classes. It's nice when things work out that way.

On Tuesday I attended a lecture in given by one of the co-founders of Engineers Without Borders, an organization that was started by University of Waterloo Engineering graduates. EWB recently celebrated its 10th anniversary of existence, and in the lecture the founder talked about the development and possible future directions of his organization. He touched on many different development issues and ideas that we have discussed and come across in our courses so far this year, and I wanted to speak to that.

Just a bit of background: Engineers Without Borders was founded in 2000 by Parker Mitchell and George Roter, two graduates of UW Engineering with the goal of addressing issues in the developing world by combining the technical skills of engineers, engineering students and others with the grassroots work of NGOs to help alleviate the most crushing forms of poverty in the developing world. EWB works in Africa, focusing on enabling rural Africans to access clean water, generate income from farming, and access critical infrastructure and services. In Canada, EWB and its student chapters at universities work to engage Canadians, government and businesses to become aware of development issues in Africa and makes choices to promote human development. For more information about EWB, please see this link.

In his hour-long discourse and question period, Parker Mitchell used examples and reflections on EWB’s development over the last 10 years to bring to life questions and examples of many different development issues that we have discussed and considered so far this year, including:
-what should be the goal of development?
-what does developmental success look like?

You will notice that I said “brought to life” and not “provided complete and satisfactory answers to” because there really weren’t answers, only situations that he had encountered that served to deepen mine and the rest of the audience’s understanding of how things work in the intricate interactions between some of the world’s poorest citizens, the generous and interested people from industrialized countries who donate their time and resources, the governments of these respective peoples, and the organizations that strive to end the worst forms of poverty. Here are some of the issues we have considered so far in Beyond Borders, along with examples from Parker’s experience.

The success of different technologies, and top-down vs. grassroots development
Parker discussed several examples of people (usually “experts”) from the industrialized world using new technology to try to solve problems in African countries, and completely and utterly failing in this regard due to societal and other considerations. Here are a couple of examples:

A pump/merry-go-round combination
The goal of this design was to use the energy from a spinning merry-go-round that children from a village played on to pump groundwater to the surface, where it could be collected by villagers. In this example, when international organizations “drove up in their air-conditioned SUVs” to look at the experimental well, they always saw children playing on the merry-go-round, and water being pumped to the surface. However, an audit later revealed that the merry-go-round pump was providing much less than the required amount of water to satisfy the villager’s needs – which greatly confused the international workers who had always seen children playing on the merry-go-round whenever they had visited the village.

As it turned out, the merry-go-round needed to be operational at least 8 hours a day to provide enough water for the village, and the children had other things to do during their regular day – such as playing soccer or other games, or doing income-generating activities such as herding goats. The children never spent more than two hours a day playing on the merry-go-round, so the pumping was, in the best case, still 75% short of the village’s requirements. The explanation for the fact that all international workers had seen the children on the merry-go-round was that the children knew what they were there to see, and made sure that they saw what they were hoping to see.

Parabolic light reflectors
The goal of this invention was to provide heat for cooking from the sun’s rays by concentrating them into one spot. However, several problems emerged from this design:
-Much of the cooking done in Africa is not done in the middle of the day, when the light reflector would be most useful
-The cooking area is difficult to access when surrounded/shielded by a large reflector
-There was little knowledge in the local community of how to fix/maintain the parabolic shield in the event that it was damaged or broken

Unsurprisingly, the parabolic shield heat source failed to take off in the way its early proponents had predicted it would.

Interestingly, Parker stressed that despite their eventual failure, these inventions were worthy experiments that were worth trying. In retrospect, it appears that both of these ideas were doomed to failure, but it is also possible that these inventions may have become widely accepted for other, unanticipated reasons. In general, however, Parker said that for every 10 inventions or new ideas, 1 will generally work quite well, 1 will be partially successful, and 8 or so will be completely unsuccessful. However, there are ways to increase the chances of success - the major one being to first become involved in the community you are targeting and make sure that whatever you are coming up with can be integrated into everyday life in that community. Parker contrasted the failures mentioned above with an EWB initiative in Mali, which sought to simplify aspects of the process used by women to make shea butter by using locally available knowledge and resources, such as improving the strength and durability of some of the devices used in the process and by replacing some metal devices with ones that could be made from wood, which was more readily available to the women.

Cell phones
In contrast to the stories described above, Parker discussed how cell phones have become one of the massive technological success stories in modern Africa. Cell phone penetration recently reached 50% in the African continent, and in some communities nearly everyone has one. The use of cell phones as phones and other creative ways has brought major improvements:

-As phones allowing for people to directly communicate over long distances, cell phones have increased economic efficiency since people can have answers without walking so far to get them. A profound example of this advantage is seen in a new pilot program in Ghana, where for a set fee per minute, users can get a doctor on their phone and describe their symptoms to a doctor, who can either provide a possible remedy or, in the case of serious symptoms, recommend that the caller go to a hospital. In countries where hospitals and doctors are few and far between and getting to a hospital can be a major endeavor, it pays not to miss time that could be spent generating income in hours spent traveling to a hospital, and allows doctors to focus on the most serious cases.

-As a way to access the internet, cell phones are a relatively cheap and compact way to access information, and require less power than computers. For example, farmers in poor countries can easily access weather data and meteorological predictions, allowing them to make better choices about how to run their farms.

-As a way to do banking, cell phones have made transactions smoother and easier to track. Given that transactions with cell phones can be monitored much more easily than transactions, they may provide a new way for farmers to access loans. Previously, farmers looking to borrow money from banks were denied on the grounds that roughly half of farmers are unable to repay loans provided to them, and there was no good way to differentiate between those farmers who would be able to repay the loans from those who would not be able to. With the rise of cell phones as banking tools, banks may now be able to find a profile for borrowers who will be successful in repaying loans, providing a potential cashflow for farmers where none existed before.

It was really exciting to hear about all the different ways that cell phones are being creatively used by Africans, in ways that further the possibility that “the most crushing forms of poverty might be eliminated within our lifetime,” in Parker’s own words.

More unintended consequences
Another “food for thought” moment for me came at the very end of the talk, when Parker was asked to address a criticism of EWB – specifically, that its work benefitted the strongest members of poor communities, often the leaders, much more than it did for the weak or marginalized people within these communities. To the surprise of many in the audience, Parker did not defend himself from this criticism, but then launched into an explanation that justified his organization’s actions.

In one small Ghanaian village, an NGO had set up a program of free vouchers for fertilizer for widows in the community. The idea of the program is that it would benefit the most disadvantaged members of the community (unmarried, often elderly, women). However, Parker witnessed a 20-something young man buying fertilizer one day, and asked him where he had gotten the coupon – which the young man explained he had been given by his aunt, herself a widow. Thinking that he had uncovered a serious abuse of the system, Parker was somewhat distraught until another volunteer explained to him that maybe what was happening wasn’t so bad.

At the risk of revealing that I really don’t know that much about growing crops, apparently the application of fertilizer in agriculture is a very precise process – for the fertilizer to be used to its maximum effect, it must be applied at the right time, in the right quantity…and the people who are most likely to use the fertilizer to the maximum effect are young farmers, not older widows, who may be experiencing weakness and/or health problems, miss a day in the fields, and not use the fertilizer to its maximum effect. Therefore, in terms of the whole community, the abuse of the system that Parker had witnessed would likely provide more food for everyone. Furthermore, family ties in African villages remain strong enough that the aunt who gave her nephew the fertilizer voucher would, as a family member, receive more food than she otherwise would – showing the system to be a success at supporting the widowed population, albeit not in the way originally intended…and as an added bonus, there would be more food for the entire community. The farmer’s personal initiative and ambition would have trickle-down effects for the people around him.

This example really made me think…especially since it touched on an internal debate that has been raging within me for most of my politically conscious life, and even more so in the last 8 months, since I started the Beyond Borders program. That debate is political, and it can be portrayed as left-wing vs. right-wing, economically conservative vs. economically socialist as they are spoken about in the media. To present the various sides of the argument I’m going to present this in a point vs counterpoint form. Please keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list of ALL the pros and cons, but just the way I have considered them.

Point1: Classical economics (free markets, economic conservatism, etc) provides, in theory, the most efficient allocation of resources – as long as certain assumptions are met (access of all participants to information, lack of coercion, etc). The selfish pursuit of individual interests actually benefits everyone, since people looking for money will do so by creating products and services that are in-demand and avoid producing products and services that other people don’t want. Thus, without any central organization or planning, capitalist societies achieve near-optimal efficiency in their actions.

Counterpoint1: The basic assumptions behind classical economics are rarely, if ever, found. There has never been a society where all participants had ready equal access to information, for example. Generally, the rich access information better than the poor (or uneducated), thus widening the gap between classes. When society is left to its own devices, the most disadvantaged tend to become more disadvantaged. Inequalities of opportunity seem to be inevitable with free markets.

Point2: Relying on yourself to do things, and not the government, can lead to creative solutions that a reliance on government and government handouts often cannot. One of the most powerful and exciting experiences in a human’s life is independence…and independence can be crushed when governments get into meddling. When you take your own skills, and what you have to offer, and get out there and make some money with them, the world’s verification of you and your contribution to society is seen in the money that you make…or the money you don’t make.

Counterpoint2: What might be considered “meddling” is often the government’s attempt to redress often-inherent inequalities. For example, some people are introverted and others are extroverted, but extroverts have an advantage over introverts in business because they relish the encounters and small talk with others that are the prelude to almost any business deal. In the long run, these inherent differences will predictably result in extroverts dominating in the business world. While this is just one example, there are plenty of other ways that capitalism inherently disregards certain groups of people – especially the weak (eg. the elderly, the sick, the disabled) who do not contribute to the system as easily as do the strong – as Jean Vanier so eloquently described in “Becoming Human.” The readings we did last term by Paul Farmer, which discussed “structural violence” towards poor, rural Haitians show that these individuals are not in any sense on the same footing as wealthier Haitians, or with poor Canadians. There is simply no way that they would not be exploited by free markets.

Point3: While the strong will come out on top in a free-market society, it does not mean that the weak will necessarily languish – benefits will often trickle down to all members of society. Parker’s story shows an example of this, with the Ghanaian aunt benefitting from her “strong” nephew. Another example of the trickle-down approach in Ghana: Parker says that he and other in the development community joke that if many NGOs had had their way, cell phone technology would have first been brought to the most isolated and impoverished Ghanaian villages…and the technology would have failed – there wouldn’t be enough paying members to support the network, there would be no one to communicate with, etc. Instead, the first cell phone towers were established in Ghanaian cities, at the behest of the wealthy classes, who initially were the only ones who could support the high costs of cell phones. As the technology gradually took hold, costs fell and more people could access the phones, thus allowing more and more people to access the phones…eventually, they spread to the countryside, where cell phones are now able to provide all the benefits described above in the “Cell Phones” section.

Of course, this internal argument is far from any resolution. However, to the credit of the Beyond Borders program, I have been forced – through the readings, discussions and volunteer work that we have done – to further develop these points and counterpoints going back and forth. It definitely is a much more sophisticated debate than before. Many thanks to Parker Mitchell for providing ammo for both sides!

An update - and Vancouver 2010

Hi everyone!

It’s been several weeks since my last blog post and I know I’ve left many of you who were getting used to my regular posts in the lurch, unable to access my thoughts (worth much more than a penny apiece I would say). My excuse for this would be that it’s been busy – but that hasn’t stopped all the other BBers from posting so I’m I know that’s not going to cut it. However I hope to fill you all in with what’s been going on for me since then:

-For Reading Week I visited some family in Vancouver. It was not at all coincidental that the Olympics were going on at the same time, and that was why I went...my thoughts on the Olympics will come later on in this post.

-My fundraising has been a huge success. Due for the most part to the many generous donations that I received from friends and family, I’m now less than $150 away from my fundraising target of $2000!

-Our group fundraising received a huge boost through two successful events that we held:

1.Music with a Mission @ Bomber band night (held on Saturday, March 13) – we raised several hundred dollars from our Band Night at Bomber, our campus bar, where three excellent bands (Stonefox, Junka and IVS) wowed our guests with their musical abilities. We were able to keep our proceeds almost all of our proceeds due to funding from the Federation of Students and the Arts Endowment Fund.

2.Yard Sale / Pancake Breakfast (held on Sunday, March 21) – we raised another several hundred dollars from our event held at St. Jerome’s, where we received incredible support from the University Catholic Community. Members of the congregation donated many items that we were able to sell, and wolfed down our pancakes after mass.

-I began volunteering at St. John’s Kitchen in Kitchener, where many other BBers have gone for their volunteering as well...more details on volunteering to come in later posts.

-I’ve started getting things together for my placement this summer – for example, yesterday I got first round of shots that I will need to take to become immunized against a plethora of disease I most certainly do NOT want to fall ill with this summer (yellow fever, hepatitis A, rabies, etc).

-I’ve hit the home stretch of 4th-year engineering with many final projects coming together, including a design project presentation which we finished just this afternoon.

I hope that brings you all up to speed a bit. However, I’d like to bring you all back to my experience at the Winter Olympics, and how I think it relates to Beyond Borders. I started this post a while ago, when the Olympics were still fresh on my mind – and the rest of the country’s as well – but I got stuck and I wasn’t quite sure how to express my thoughts on the matter. Now I’m going to take another stab at it.

The Olympics

As anyone who was there will probably tell you, being in Vancouver for the Olympics was a fantastic experience, and for me it was a really nice change of pace from the craziness of this term. Just walking around downtown Vancouver was an experience enough in itself - the energy in the city was incredible, with streets blocked and people walking everywhere, wearing red and waving Canada flags and generally acting friendly and patriotic. I was also able to land some tickets to hockey, curling and speed skating, which were definitely worth the two-hour wait in a seemingly endless line downtown. At my last event, the women’s 1000m long-track speed skating, I even saw a Canadian (Christine Nesbitt) win a gold medal with an incredibly hard-fought skate.

Despite the incredible experience of being at the Winter Olympics, I couldn’t help but have a few thoughts that made me a little uneasy with the state of things...I guess Beyond Borders has that effect on you. The Olympics, in all their glory, also made me think of some things that really indicate a lot about our world and some of the problems that we’re facing. So here goes.

The Good

I’ll start with the good...and there was a lot of good. As I mentioned before, the energy of the city was incredible, and there was a really friendly, “good, clean fun” aspect to it that isn’t always there in large crowds. I’ve been to European soccer games, American football games, and there was a different feeling there altogether – although it’s worth keeping in mind that the soccer and football fans tend to be self-selecting as generally obnoxious, drunken, young, and mostly men. Still, the crowds in Vancouver were SO far removed from this that I was shocked – in a good way of course.

In my humble opinion, I think the good-natured crowds were a result of a happy confluence – the fact that they were made up of people who were A. mostly Canadians and B. at the Olympics. There’s something to be said that even at their loudly drunkest (i.e. nights after big wins by the Canadian hockey team), the RCMP officers working crowd control downtown were bored (those being the words of a friend of my cousin’s that I met, an RCMP officer, describing what her colleagues had been telling her). I truly do believe that there is something in Canadian culture that encourages this good behaviour in the midst of celebration.

I also believe that there was a discernible “Olympic effect” that was seen not only in the crowds celebrating downtown, but throughout the entire city for as long as the Olympics were there. More than any other sporting event, the Olympics focuses not only on who is the best, but the gutsy and brave performances of athletes who do not necessarily end up on the podium. This is reflected in the philosophy of Pierre de Coubertin, the Frenchman who founded the modern Olympics in 1896:

“The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

This spirit is manifested in many aspects of the Olympics – such as the Paralympic Games and the Terry Fox Award (created for the Vancouver Olympics) to honour Olympians who touched the world with courage, humility and extraordinary athletic abilities. Who can forget Joannie Rochette, skating days after her mother unexpectedly died, doing it in her honour? Or Petra Majdic, the Slovenian who competed in the 1.4 km women’s classic sprint in incredible pain from a collapsed lung? (Apparently, a new saying in Slovenia is “When Chuck Norris can’t go on, Petra Majdic perseveres!” haha). For me, it’s the power of humanity in people like Joannie Rochette, Petra Majdic and the Paralympians that make the Olympics truly great.

The Bad (Uncomfortable)

For some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to say “Bad”, but there were some things that made me uncomfortable. I’m sure many of you have heard some of the criticisms that were given in the weeks leading up to the Olympics about poor and homeless people being displaced for the Athlete’s Village, and I would have to say those criticisms seemed to be justified. I’ve been to Vancouver before, and never have homeless people been less noticeable. I’m not going to talk about it too much though, because it’s probably something you heard about before.

What made me uncomfortable relates a little more deeply to the Canadian psyche, and I’m sure many of you have heard about it, and probably considered it yourself as well. Generally, it has to do with the fact that Canadians aren’t generally known to be nationalistic or patriotic, and there was an “awakening” during the Olympics that hadn’t been seen before. I think there’s something too this.

When I was in Vancouver, Canada wasn’t really winning as many medals as had been hoped for, and the “Own the Podium” campaign had seemingly embarrassed itself. However, the early winners (such as Alexandre Bilodeau, who won the moguls gold medal) were absolutely showered with attention. There was some focus on the other athletes who were giving gutsy performances, but they never got the same attention...well, except for Christine Nesbitt (the speed skater whose victory I saw) – but I think that was mostly because she was gutsy AND she won.

I know many of you might be saying, “what’s new about this?” and to be honest, I really shouldn’t have been surprised...I’m not sure, maybe I held Canadians to different standards. What changed for me was the fact that during the second week of the games, when Canada won the most gold medals, ending up with more than any other country in history in the Winter Olympics, gold seemed to become the only thing that we cared about as a country...and the more human side of things, the one espoused by Pierre de Coubertin, seemed to be forgotten, or at times, given only lip service.


How does this relate to Beyond Borders? I think it has to do with winning and losing. I am (relatively) proud to live in a country where the welfare of others seems to be (relatively) important, this of course relative to other developed countries who have won in the competition for resources and wealth. While we still have a long ways to go, I truly do believe that Canadians as a people care about more than themselves – a position that I feel is supported by the support we have for universal health care (not perfect of course, but where everyone is covered) and the interest many people take what is going on poorer communities, be they in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside, or in the developing world.

Based on the focus on winning, and gold medals...I’m a bit worried that Canadians may have let go of this aspect of themselves. Hopefully I’m wrong – in the several weeks since the end of the Olympics, the general hysteria has died down, and Canadians have taken the opportunity to prove themselves generous in their support for victims of the recent earthquake in Chile. What effect did Vancouver 2010 have on the country? I guess only time will tell.

Iron Ring reflections

Hi everyone! Given that it’s been a week and a half since my last post I’m sure you’re all just aching for more pensive words from David Hewson, Esquire. For those of you who were hoping for another marathon post of 2500+ words, I’m sorry but you will be sadly disappointed – I do like blogging but it’s just hard to find the time.

Last week’s post didn’t really give you much of an update of what I’m up to, and for the most part it’s been more of the same in many ways. I have five engineering courses to stay on top of, my Beyond Borders course, plenty of things to think about to prepare for my trip this summer – at the moment, I have to think about the shopping list of immunizations against a plethora of diseases whose symptoms do NOT sound like fun in the slightest – and still a long way to go on the fundraising front. In the past weeks I’ve begun to finally iron out most of the wrinkles in my Soup and Stew for Peru fundraiser and start to sell my frozen homemade soups, stews and chillies, and the initial response has been extremely positive which is always nice to hear. I’m also spearheading a band night fundraiser (called Music with a Mission Redux...to differentiate it from the band night last term haha) that our group will be holding in March.

However, last weekend stands out for me in a very important way, because after 4.5 gruelling years, the 2010 UW Engineering class finally got their Iron Rings. For those of you who are entirely unfamiliar with the Iron Ring, let me digress: the Iron Ring is traditionally received by graduating engineers during their final academic term, in a secret ceremony whose details are not meant to be made public (so don’t ask me to tell you about). After the ceremony, the participating students emerge with an Iron Ring on the pinky finger of their working (writing) hand. The iron in the ring (it’s actually stainless steel these days) symbolizes the iron in the Quebec Bridge, which collapsed twice during construction due to faulty engineering, and caused the death of several workers. The idea behind the Iron Ring is to remind engineers of their duty of care to the general public, who trust that engineers will do their work in a thorough and ethical way and will not harm them. By wearing the Iron Ring on the outermost finger of their working hand, engineers constantly feel the presence of the Iron Ring as they work and are reminded of this responsibility.

Personally, I strongly identify with the idea of the Iron Ring and the message it conveys, and ever since I have received my ring I haven’t been able to stop playing with it and feeling it on my hand as I write. It’s also made me reflect on where I’m coming from, where I’m going and probably most importantly, where I am right now. In many ways, I have (voluntarily) branded myself as an engineer – or at least an engineering student – and yet, it was something I was never so sure about. When I applied to university, engineering was just one of several different programs I applied to, including Arts, Arts and Science, and Environmental Sciences. One of the reasons I chose Environmental Engineering is that if I didn’t like it, it would be easier to switch into other programs than if I wanted to switch from Arts or Sciences into Engineering! Throughout the first couple of years of university I often felt like I really didn’t belong in the program, and that I should have done something else. However, as we began to start applying things we learned about in class to real-life designs and were encouraged to solve problems for ourselves, things became lot more interesting. The excitement I’ve felt about engineering this year, which really hit me when I finally felt the cold ring on my hand made me realize: I had been so used to being unhappy in my program, how would I deal with the fact that I now kind of liked it?

At the same time, I’m trying to fight off the influence engineering has had on me, or at least trying to balance it with something else – and this was one of the reasons why I decided to apply to Beyond Borders in the first place. I had always been interested in issues of social justice, equality and development, but I hadn’t really had the chance to focus on them in an academic sense since high school. The program did not disappoint, and as we ploughed our way through readings and confronted issues and emotions that I hadn’t truly addressed in years, I realized that I had changed as a person in the intervening time...arguably ways that made me more of an “engineer.” I was definitely more results- and action-oriented, and more focused on tackling problems that had clear possible solutions than in considering problems that seemed inherently hopeless. I also noticed that I was much more critical of people who did not share these priorities – to the point that I could see my “new” self being impatient and frustrated with my “old”, pre-engineering self. Many people would argue that this shift to being more practical was a good thing, but I wasn’t so sure. For example, I remember on several occasions being upset by my inability to focus on my engineering work after doing a Beyond Borders reading, since I just couldn’t focus on flows and fluxes and fluids when I had just been forced to reevaluate my opinion about one issue or another. Pre-engineering Dave would have delighted in his world being spun on its head, but post-engineering Dave found it disconcerting and annoying. This, of course, is the whole point – as an anonymous wise lady once told me, whose identity will remain anonymous (her name is Joanne Benham Rennick), “if you’re not frustrated, you’re not learning.”

Since then, I think I’ve begun to reach a balance between the two, and I’m incredibly grateful to Beyond Borders and the people I have met because of it. While I think that UW Engineering is an excellent program, I do think that in many ways, it can hurt your humanity. It’s not intentional, but I believe that the extremely technical nature of the program, combined with a heavy courseload that can make it difficult to find the time to do much other than work, led me to neglect important aspects of who I am and who I want to be. Ironically, I think that by trying to break away from the beaten path I could have followed with engineering, and by getting into Beyond Borders, I think I have developed more of the ethics that the Iron Ring supposedly promotes.

Earlier, I mentioned that one of the reasons I ultimately chose to study engineering was because it would be able to switch out of more easily than other programs, but recently my mom reminded me of another reason - one that I had totally forgotten. During the time when I was choosing university programs to apply for, Haiti was hit consecutively by three different hurricanes, causing widespread flooding and death. From what I was reading at the time, the extent of the devastation in Haiti was caused by larger problems, such as the massive deforestation that caused flash flooding whenever any significant rainfall took place and by the general poverty of the country, whose people could not afford to build structures that were strong enough to withstand the flooding. I learned that environmental engineers could help determine how to avoid the floods and the devastation they caused, by reforesting important water reacharge areas, and generally improving the environmental situation. I had completely forgotten about this until this year when Haiti was once again devastated by a natural disaster, this time by a massive earthquake in January that hit the most densely populated part of the country. My mom reminded me that "you went into environmental engineering for Haiti" - which isn't the entire truth, but it was shocking to realize that I had completely forgotten about that. So in a sense, getting into Beyond Borders was like coming home...maybe engineering hasn't changed me as much as I thought it did.

Lifting weights

Note: I started this post as a comment on the blog post of another Beyond Borders student, Tina, who made an anti-procrastination declaration in one of her recent posts. While I was originally intending to write a couple paragraphs in response, I soon realized that my comment had mushroomed into a page or so of material, with plenty of thoughts left to go! At 2500 words, this is a pretty long post; since Tina was the one who inspired it, I have written it directed towards her, so it can be read as one giant long comment. For Tina’s original post, “making the first step…it ain’t easy.”, click here.

Tina:

Ditto to what you and Raquel both have said...I am definitely a procrastinator and it feels good to stand up and say it. Apparently one of the 12 steps in AA, or NA, or any Addicts Anonymous, is to tell someone your intent to change in order to make yourself accountable, and I think you definitely did that with your post. Personally, I have made some huge strides in organizational skills over the last 8 months and I'm definitely ahead of where I was before...needless to say my first blog post of the term was submitted en retard as well. So there’s still a ways to go.

One of the things that really helped me was the realization that organization, time management, prioritization, etc, are SKILLS in much the same way that doing math, knitting a scarf and playing soccer or guitar are skills. Some people are naturally gifted with them and others aren’t…but as with any skill, even the most talented person will require some experience before they can achieve greatness! This is something that took me a long time to realize...that it was OKAY for me to not be automatically good at organizational skills. I didn't really need them in high school because the materials were presented at a slower place and my life was pretty structured, but university arrived with a much more demanding courseload and array of fun things to do that turned my high school routine on its head. Although my academic skills were sometimes up to the task, my time management skills were almost non-existent.

While I always knew that I was disorganized, it took me a few years to realize (wow, now that I wrote that I can't believe how long that DID take) that I just had to admit how dire my situation was. Once I did that things got a lot easier. To explain my point, I’m going to make use of an analogy that I think really demonstrates what I’m trying to say: lifting weights. (For the record, I only recently started lifting weights in the last several weeks, so I’m not that experienced personally, but I have been into running for the last eight years or so and a lot of my friends are in Kinesiology, so I’m pretty grounded in the theory of it all!) Every January, loads of people show up at the gym with New Year’s resolutions to get in shape, get fit, get healthy, get DIESED (he’s probably joking, but this is actually one of my friend’s goals for 2010), or whatever other goal they have. But it’s that first day at the gym which usually determines how things will turn out, and whether the person will keep up their commitment. If, on the first day, you try to bench-press 400 pounds, you’re probably not gonna last that long. A much better approach is to lift what you can, figure out your baseline and begin to test your limits.

In the case of organizational skills, I was eventually forced to admit that despite being in my 20s, I could name 8-year-olds (stupid kids!! with their elementary school agendas and non-mechanical pencils!!) who had the same organizational abilities as me. In weightlifting terms, I was benching about 10 pounds or so. It was embarrassing to be working in an office on a co-op job, supposedly “on loan” from one of the most prestigious engineering programs in the country, with employers who were just expecting me to be able to juggle multiple tasks of multiple importance, assuming that the time management skills were there. They weren’t. One of the lowest points occurred when I was working in Ottawa in the Fall of 2008, when I could not for the life of me write a report in the 2 months available to me during the work term, and I ended up writing it in the week or so before the actual due date. I was really hard on myself to the point of despair at times – I wanted to be able to do things, I tried harder and harder and beat myself up over it, but the only thing that seemed to change was how unhappy I was with myself. Months later, once I finally admitted just how poor I was at time management, I was able to start to build myself up from there. In a much more public way than me, you've already done this with your blog post, so congrats!

To continue the weight-lifting analogy, the way to get stronger is to keep track of what you are able to comfortably lift, and always try to lift a little more than that. The action of lifting slightly above your limit breaks down your muscle fibres, but without causing injury, forcing them to rebuild themselves to be stronger than they were before. Most personal trainers encourage people who are getting into weightlifting to keep an exercise chart, which they use to keep track of how much weight they lifted, or how many repetitions they did for a given exercise. After several weeks, new lifters can begin to see their progress, and also get excited about where they might be in the future! As long as you know where you are and are patient, you will begin to see yourself making steady progress, avoid major injury, and watch yourself become leaner and more toned.

To relate this back to organizational skills, I personally knew last summer that if I was going to do an international development placement in the future AND deal with 4th-year engineering in the fall (at that time, I thought I had missed the chance to do Beyond Borders), I would definitely need to get my crap together and figure out how to manage myself and my time a little better! So I spent a lot of my free time over the summer reading up on time management and organizational skills (I will add a few of these links to the end of my post), just to bring myself up to speed on the different strategies that were out there. For the first time, I kept a to-do list that I (not my parents, not my teachers) had created for myself, and I began to think about how I spent my time and organized myself. And I began to see results: the lady in the Environmental Engineering office, who was always frustrated with me missing deadlines, was pleasantly surprised with how quick my responses were to her questions about my academic status. With the help of my current roommate, I was able to find a lease for 8 months in a pretty nice apartment in Waterloo, despite the fact that I was three time zones away in BC! Keeping track of the changes and watching my stress level drop was really energizing, and kept me motivated to keep on getting better at organizing myself.

Back to lifting weights. Despite their general advice to slowly increase the amount you lift, on days when you’re feeling really energetic and great, a lot of athletic trainers will encourage you to really push yourself and go for it on the weights. Some days, everything falls into place, and you lift more than they ever have before. On other days, you crash and burn. I was on a rowing machine last week and felt really good, so I started rowing like a bat out of hell…I ended up exhausted and only able to row about 75% of the ambitious target distance I had set for myself. I guess it just wasn’t one of those good days.

In my case, I headed into September really motivated and looking forward to talking to Joanne (our Beyond Borders prof) about the opportunities that were out there for doing international development work. To my great surprise, Joanne told me that there was some space left in the Beyond Borders group and that since I had already gone through the interview process and been accepted, the spot was mine if I wanted it. Despite the fact that I knew Beyond Borders was one of the best chances out there to really explore the ideas behind international development AND do development work, I didn’t say yes right away, because I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it. Would I be able to handle my hardest terms of engineering thus far, as well as the demands of unfamiliar coursework, volunteering and fundraising? I wasn’t sure I could do it, and I’m still not sure that I can, but eventually I realized that I had to go for it – life was too short and I knew I would regret passing up on the opportunity too much. But one thing I do know is, had I started Beyond Borders in the same place I had been 4 months earlier, before all the research I did on organization and time management, there is a very slim chance I would have made it this far. Last term was extremely stressful at times and I didn’t get the marks I hoped for, but I made it through. This term I have bitten off much more than ever before, and I have a lot more on my plate, but I know that I am dealing with it better than David Hewson, circa Feb 2009, ever would have.

Not all personal trainers out there agree on this point, but since I agree with it (and since it fits in nicely with my analogy), I’ll throw it in anyways. Sometimes, you don’t feel like going to the gym, or for whatever reason, you just don’t end up lifting weights for a while. Maybe it’s because of a lack of motivation, or fatigue. In these cases, sometimes the best thing you can do is just stop, and give your muscles a break. You return to your old routines and habits that you’ve had for a long time and that you’re used to; but after a while you start to miss the gym and that exhausted-but-satisfied feeling you get after a good workout. So you head back and find yourself reenergized and stronger than before; if you can figure out what made you stop hitting the gym in the first place, you change things up so that it won’t happen twice.

For me, last December represented a sort of breaking point for me and my love affair with building up my organizational skills: I had a bunch of projects to do, plenty of exams to study for and I was behind on everything, and under the stress of it all I began to slip back into my old routines. And as soon as I did, I began to feel like was at home again, doing some of the things that made first-year university so fun - recklessly racking up sleep debt, watching mindless TV and having hours-long philosophical discussions with friends. These all represented areas of my life that just hadn’t fit in to the disciplined routine I had adopted. At the same time, however, I began to miss some of benefits of my disciplined routine…finishing all the schoolwork I needed to accomplish by 11 at night, being awake and able to concentrate in class, etc. So when this school term rolled around I went back to my to-do lists and organizer, but made a few changes so that more of the important things I missed from “first-year life” (more time with friends, the occasional late-night philosophical debate) were included, thus making it more likely that I would actually stick to my new habits.

One of the final connections I see is this: people who take no interest in lifting weights will have a lot of trouble succeeding, even if they follow everything that their athletic trainer lays out for them. Ideally, people should find something that they like and works for them – running, yoga, pilates, martial arts, mountain biking, etc – there are so many options for being active and getting fit. The main thing is that you find something you like. In my case, I was really unmotivated and unhappy in my engineering program for the first several years I studied it. It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected when I had enrolled in the program, and I didn’t exactly like where it was heading. It was no wonder that I had trouble getting my act together on organization and time management.

However, Beyond Borders has changed all that, because it is something I am really interested in. I found the readings last term interesting and challenging, as well as the way that Joanne chose to conduct the course (peer-to-peer, group-directed learning). I’m excited to do the volunteering, although I haven’t started it yet. The fundraising has also been a challenge, but I have really enjoyed being able to connect with you and Denise with my “Soup and Stew for Peru” fundraiser and gain the benefit of all the work you guys have done with “Cookies with a Cause”. Most of all, it has been fantastic to get to know 13 other awesome people (I’m including Joanne, Elyse and Sanja in this – who cares if they don’t have to blog this term) and have such fantastic collective experiences. And as a bonus, I have found that I really enjoy my 4th-year engineering courses, to my great surprise. This year we are finally starting to make use of everything we learned over the past three years, and working with my group on our design project as the “Landfills Expert and Head GIS Technician” has made me realize just how much I know and am capable of, while pushing me in new ways as well. Here’s where I’m going with all this: time management and organization become a lot easier to get a grip on when you love what you’re doing. I’ve seen you in action in the various aspects of our time together in Beyond Borders, and I have no doubt in my mind that you are excited about this program and where you are going with it. So in my mind, the time management and organization skills will come. When you find the right thing for you, the little stuff starts to self-optimize.

Lastly, and most importantly: just as one does not derive their self-worth and human dignity from the smooth, toned muscles of a rigorous weight-lifting regimen, human value does not come from organizational skills. There are lots of benefits to being healthy and fit, and able to juggle obligations and multitask, and it’s okay to put some pressure on ourselves to improve in these areas. But at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we are succeeding with our family, friends, values, actions, and in the other, most important areas of our lives. Last year I realized that the real reason why my time in Ottawa went so badly had nothing to do with my organizational skills, it was that I was hundreds of kilometres and more than a $100 bus ride away from my family and closest friends when I really needed them. I felt incredibly isolated and lonely; I hadn’t gotten the important things in my life right. As long as we are happy with ourselves and our relationships, and we get up every day and do the best we can to make the world a little bit better, then we are succeeding as human beings – and that’s the most important thing of all.


Some Links for Time Management/Organizational Skills

Mindtools - this one is my favourite, in addition to the time management/organization stuff there's also stress management, decision making and loads of other useful skills.
Studenthacks.org - this one is geared mostly towards students. In some ways is actually more about how to get away with poor time management skills! haha
Steve Pavlina - I got this from a link at Student Hacks and this guy definitely takes personal productivity and time management to a ridiculous level...the dude is an organized gold for sure. But there are some really good articles, such as "How to become an early riser" and "10 Tips for College Students."
Enjoy!

Eyes in Gaza

Well everyone, it is time for another post to keep you all updated on the life, dreams and ambitions of your favourite correspondent. Life has been (surprise surprise) busy, but busy is good in this case. I’ve started to get some donations and that has made me feel a lot better about my fundraising goals…there’s something just so de-stressing about watching an overwhelming large number ($1700) take a broadside hit and emerge a couple hundred smaller. I enjoy the feeling immensely. So please, those of you who want to donate or contribute to my fundraising, please don’t be shy. Click here for more information on how you can help my fundraising campaign.

Dr. Mads

Today I’d like to talk about an extremely powerful experience I had, which brought to light some issues that we talked about in our Beyond Borders class last term. Spurred on by a ringing endorsement from my sister, I went to the “Eyes in Gaza” lecture on Monday given by Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who has done work in Palestine for many years. He has gone back and forth between the Middle East his home in Tromso, Norway (interestingly, it is the most northernly university town in the world, 2 hours!!! north of the Arctic Circle) for the last 25 years, working as a doctor in both regions but also building understanding and support between his Norwegian countrymen and the people of the Middle East. Although his work in the Middle East began in Lebanon in 1983, during that country’s war with Israel, “Dr. Mads” has since spent most of his time and energy in Palestine. In the Winter of 2008/2009, Dr. Mads was one of two foreign doctors in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli operation that was devastating to many Palestinians living in Gaza; since he was one of the only foreign nationals who was in the area at the time, Dr. Mads gave many interviews to media from around the globe, describing what was happening and becoming the main source of information for the world. Currently, Dr. Mads is travelling to many different universities throughout Canada and the United States, describing his experiences in the hope of swaying Canadian and American opinions on what is happening in Palestine, especially since the Gaza Strip has been cut off from the world by an Israeli-imposed blockade after the election of Hamas in 2007. For more information on Dr. Mads, click here.

As I mentioned earlier, my sister (who saw him at an earlier stop on his Canadian circuit) strongly recommended that I attend the lecture; to be perfectly honest, I probably would not have gone without her pushing me. I think I am similar to many other people in our society, in that I consider myself an empathetic person who is deeply troubled by conflict in the Middle East, especially between Israel and the Palestinian people; I sincerely wish for peace and a lasting peace instead of seemingly endless wars. As time went on, however, I just didn’t want to think about it anymore, partly because I know people who feel very strongly on both sides of the issue and it was extremely polarizing and deeply emotional. At the end of the day I decided that roughly speaking, both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian issue were correct in some way, both sides were guilty of atrocities, and that the issue is really complicated with an extremely long history. Given the fact that attempt after attempt to negotiate a lasting truce had been made, with no success, and with no reason to think that peace would come soon, I unconsciously decided that it was better not to stress about issues that are important and affect the lives of millions, but are entirely out of my control. I ended up deciding to be neutral on the subject. It saves me a lot of headaches.

In essence, my decision is one that many people make every day. Although people “out there” do care, many of them are like me – they see no way out, no end in sight, and don’t know what they can do about issues that they hope will be resolved. They don’t know what they can do, but they are looking for a way to do something. Joanne, our professor, has talked to us about this before, and it is something I have noticed when I talk to people about Beyond Borders. They see me, they know what I am doing, and they become extremely excited for me. They want to help me out because they see me DOING something. It’s something that I was never really prepared for, but my friends in Beyond Borders have said that they experience the same thing with people. Seeing people “come to life” is amazing. And according to Joanne, it’s one of the central goals of the program: activating us, as well as the people we interact with and affect, so that we stop being completely neutral and DO and make our world more just and peaceable.

Dr. Mads’ 2-hour presentation has ended my neutrality on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and that was his goal. He is openly a supporter of the Palestinian people, and strives to create solidarity with them among people in Norway and throughout the world. Seeing his lecture was an extremely powerful experience; he combined an impersonal presentation of information – such as the number of Palestinian dead and the text of Israeli politicians speaking about their stance toward the Palestinian people – with intensely human and personal aspects, such as smiling pictures of the Palestinians who are his friends, and pictures and videos of life in the hospital during Operation Cast Lead. Looking at pictures of the Palestinian civilians who died in Dr. Mads’ care from the injuries they sustained, or the pictures of the many amputations he performed, and hearing the sounds of artillery shelling while watching young children run for their lives, affected me in a very profound way. It convinced me that the current Israeli policy towards Palestine must stop, because it is a complete disgrace. Yes, in many ways the situation is complicated, but it isn’t THAT complicated: things must change. Dr. Mads suggested several ways to pressure the Israeli government to change, such as by writing to our governmental leaders and asking them to withdraw support for Israel, to stop buying Israeli products and convince others to do, and to divest stocks in Israeli weapons manufacturers. These pressures, he said, have a precedent in the world’s isolation of South Africa for its apartheid policies. I will definitely start investigating them.

Feeling the pressure

So I’m at the end of my third week of the term and starting to fully realize how much I have bitten off for myself to do this term...and wondering if I really will be able to chew it all. Engineering has always been pretty demanding but 4th year has been the most work by far – it’s been fun and interesting, since we have a lot more control over the direction we want to take with our studies, but the increased freedom has meant a lot more to worry about and manage as well. On top of all of this I decided to take the Beyond Borders course as extra electives since there was no space left in my schedule, and while I am really glad I decided to go for it, it has and will continue to test the bounds of my (somewhat limited) time management and organizational abilities.

Specifically, here’s what I’ve got on my plate this term:

-Five engineering courses
-The Beyond Borders course for this term – the biggest requirement being keeping up with this blog
-20 hours of volunteering
-$1700 of fundraising left for Beyond Borders
-Continuing to improve my Spanish
-Completing some outstanding degree requirements for engineering, including retaking an exam (in a course that, let’s say, didn’t go so well last year!)

As is pretty clear to see, it’s going to be a lot of work these next couple of months, but that’s pretty much par for the course with everyone else I know in Engineering and Beyond Borders. We all have “to do” lists that stretch for miles.

Even with all the stresses academic life at the moment, I’ve found the time to do some more research into my placement in Chincha Alta, and I’m getting more excited all the time. Last week at a fundraiser I spoke to David Perrin, the president of St. Jerome’s University, and found out that he had been to the quarry in Chincha Alta, met Brother Blaise, and taken some pictures, which I was able to take a look at. The pictures were mostly of the quarry and the buildings in and around the Oblate Mission, and while they were interesting to see I would have to say it was a huge relief to see a picture of some people from the local community. Most importantly, they had big smiles on their faces, and that definitely helped to put me at ease about my placement. From what I’ve heard from Joanne (director of the Beyond Borders program), there are many places in the developing world (and in the developed world as well, for that matter) where there is a sense of despair, and smiles are hard to come by. However, Joanne has told me that this is not at all the case where I am going, despite poverty of the area and the devastation caused by the 2007 earthquake that hit Chincha Alta. Apparently, the people in the community have a palpable sense of hope - in Joanne’s opinion, due in part to the work of Brother Blaise and the Oblates. And unsurprisingly, it has been a huge relief to learn that I am going to a vibrant community with plenty of spirit – while I know that things are probably going to be hard, it should make everything easier.

Some background info

The goal of this post is to provide a bit more of a background about myself, the Beyond Borders program, the work I will be doing this summer in Peru and everything in between.

About Me
My name is David Hewson and I am in my fourth and final year of Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo. I heard about Beyond Borders from a few different friends of mine, who all said good things, so when I realized that I had the opportunity to do the program I applied and luckily got in. While my engineering education at Waterloo and my co-op terms have been a great learning experience, and I have definitely learned a lot, I'm looking forward to the chance to do something completely different. This program includes many different opportunities to do things that I haven't done before - the most obvious being the chance to live and work in a developing country for three months. But the other aspects of the program - considering the concepts of development, progress and civilization through readings, raising funds for our trip, and volunteering in my community - will also be entirely new experiences as well. I am hoping that this program will give me the chance to see and consider many important issues that we as a society must address in the coming years, and make me a better global citizen at a time when the world seems to be changing more and more quickly.

Beyond Borders
The Beyond Borders program at St. Jerome's University is a one-year, service-based, experiential learning program. Students in Beyond Borders take two courses during the Fall and Winter school terms before doing a three-month international work placement, usually in a developing country. Current and past students have done development work in countries such as Botswana, Uganda, Kenya, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, India, Peru, Argentina, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador and other countries. In preparation for their work placement, students read and analyze readings related to the ideas and issues of development, volunteer in the local community, and raise funds to cover the cost of their trip. Through this combination of in-class, out-of-class and international work, students will hopefully become more aware of important issues that affect people around the world as well as in their own communities. For more information on Beyond Borders, click here.

Academic Readings
Becoming Human by Jean Vanier
Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer
I, Rigoberta Menchu by Rigoberta Menchu and Elizabeth Burgos
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

Volunteering
Beyond Borders students must complete 20 hours of volunteering with a local non-governmental organization (NGO). I have not yet arranged where I will do my fundraising, so stay posted for more details.


Fundraising
In addition to a personal contribution to their program, Beyond Borders students must raise $2000 to cover the cost of their flight and other expenses. Here is my current funraising total:
January 16 - $289.55

Group Initiatives
Last term our group conducted several joint fundraisers, including a bake sale and a band night at the Huether Hotel in Uptown Waterloo. Due to the enthusiasm generated by last term's band night event, we are in the early stages of planning another event that will likely take place in late February. Please stay posted for more details.

Individual Initiatives
For my own personal fundraising, I have decided to make and sell frozen soups and stews. My fundraiser will be called Soup and Stew for Peru. Please stay posted for more details about this.

Donations
For those of you who wish to donate to my fundraising campaign, there are several ways that you can do this:
- by cash donation
- by cheque, made out to "St. Jerome's University" and clearly indicated as for David Hewson's Beyond Borders fundraising
- by credit card, over the phone. Call 1-519-884-8111, ext 28254 and ask for Rhonda. Make sure to mention that it is for David Hewson who is in Beyond Borders.

All donations above $10 will be eligible for a tax receipt.

Where I am going
My placement will be in Chincha Alta, Peru, a city in a dry area of Peru located south of the capital city, Lima. I will be working in a poor area which was hard hit by an earthquake in 2007. As a port city in the Andean cocaine-producing region, it has also been greatly affected by drug trafficking in the area. For more information on Chincha Alta, click on the Wikipedia link here.

The brunt of my work will take place in a quarry run by a Catholic priest from Cape Breton Island named Blaise MacQuarrie. An oblate priest, Brother Blaise established the quarry in Chincha Alta several decades ago, making adobe bricks that local residents can use to build their own homes - so I will be doing a LOT of manual labor. The need for bricks and homebuilding has increased since the 2007 earthquake, which was described by Br. Blaise in this link (scroll down to the section entitled "Peru". For additional information about the quarry, click here. In addition to the quarry, I will also have the opportunity to do other development work - such as working with youth and other community-related activities.