Amartya Sen is awesome!

My aha! moment this month was this (and I hope this makes sense, because it's like an explosion in my head):

I can link my specific CED project in Montreal (very concrete) with Amartya Sen's capability approach to economic development (VERY theoretical)!!

This may seem banal and very simple, and my explanation of it is very boiled down and summarised, I admit, but actually being able to take what I learn in the academic setting directly into the real world is pretty amazing (and those of you have done an undergraduate degree know where I'm coming from!)

Don't get me wrong, I think my B.A. prepared me for starting to work in my field and I value my education up to this point very much. But actually seeing how I can put into practice such a theoretical philosophy - read some Sen and you'll see just how theoretical it seems - is one of the most exciting things to happen since I started my Masters.

Ok, back to my literature review ;)
See you later!

After autumn comes...

It's November already? I have been really excited about winter this year because we bipassed it completely last year, but now that I'm cold all the time and only two of our heaters work, I'm not so sure anymore. Hopefully the skating and snow-shoeing will make up in fun what I'm lacking in warmth.

November also means I'm halfway through my first semester of my Masters program! My three courses this semester have definitely kept me busy, and I'm wondering how I'll fit in two more next semester, but overall I'm having a blast. My biggest time swallower is the first of a four-seesmter course called CED Project. This fall I'm doing all the preliminary research for this project, which will take place in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Having done all the statistical research in my first month, this month I concentrated on primary research - interviews, focus group discussions, surveys - so that I am actually getting advice and feedback from people directly in the community. My project idea is beginning to take shape and I'm so excited/nervous/terrified to actually get it started next summer.

In October, Charlie and Alix and I went to the Botanical Gardens for their annual Chinese lantern festival. It was actually the first time I'ven ever been and it is so stunning. The Montreal Botanical Gardens have a really close relationship with the Chinese Botanical Gardens, and so alot of our expositions and gardens have Asian themes and styles. This lantern exposition takes a year to complete: around this time of year, the Montreal team draws the designs for next year, then they send the designs to China, where each piece is hand-made, which takes a few month, and then they have to ship them to Montreal to arrive around July, and its taks almost two months to put them all up!

Catching up

I located more tv coverage of the SCTNow event. It's from a French station - V - and I was interviewed for it!
Click here to watch it.

Also here are some pictures from our weekend in New Hampshire this month:

Hanging out with Dan's friend, Brian, in Portsmouth

Discovering Golden Bowl restaurant in Manchester... yum!

Charlie trying to be cooperative for a picture, Dan refusing

And...

Beautiful sunset on our way home

Busy, so very busy

I have so busy that I forgot to write about my last weekend in New Hampshire! And I haven't even put my pictures on my computer so that'll be for next time.

The truth is I'm LOVING school! I cannot even fathom how much work I have to do, and even though I've been steadily chipping away at it over the past week and a half, I recently realised that I've been only working on the tip of the iceberg! But it is so fascinating and I love reminding myself that I am doing exaclty what I want to be doing.

Two weekends ago, Charlie and I went down to New Hampshire with our two very good friends, Geneviève and Dan. Of course I spent most of my time in class, but we were also able to get in some good shopping and eating together and even went to Portsmouth to visit Dan's friend one evening, where I ate a rather fabulous pulled pork sandwich.

My courses went really well, I love my classmates and my professors and feel I'm learning so much. In Principles, Practices and Policy of ICED, we had a class debate, for which I had to argue, to my utter horror, that economic growth is a better indicator of a country's progress than human development indicators (for example, infant mortality rates, literacy levels, educational attainment, political freedoms, to name a few). But my team really rallied and got very good feedback from the prof. In the end, I was glad to argue something opposite my actual opinion because it helps me better understand and formulate what I do believe.

In Project Design, which is my most demanding course this semester, we discussed primary research and problem tree analyses. In the afternoon, we divided into our three groups (the international cohort forming one group) and discussed Theory U (see earlier post for my thoughts of that). It was a great discussion. I have a lot to do to complete my research for this course, but I'm really enjoying doing the literature review and community interviews. Sometime in the near future (when I have a better handle on it myself) I'll write about what I'm researching and the issue I hope to address in my project over the next two years.

Other than that, Accounting was really fun - and I'm not even kidding! It's kind of an easy class, as long as I keep on my doing homework. This class makes me feel like I'm in grade school again, filling in the balnks in my workbook!!

Thanks for keeping up with me, I feel the love!

Posting again

Hi everyone!

I'm going to start posting again. I hope to post once every week or two.

I've really been thinking about putting together a short lesson for people about to head off on Mission Trips or Hero Vacations or any other type of trip that doesn't solely include tourism. Since living in Cambodia, I've been grappling with questions regarding how we treat those that we encounter in these situations.

I'll be going through this process to work through these questions myself, but also to try to put down on screen my thoughts in a somewhat cogent manner. I will really try to keep the ranting to a minimum and the aha! moments to a maximum.

Ok, hope you enjoy!

P.S. Julia just posted so don't forget to read her post too!

What I am reading these days...

Well, if you haven't already guessed, most of my reading these days has been for academic purposes. It's a good thing I'm lovinf what I'm studying, then, eh?

A couple weeks ago, I had to read the summary of a book called Theory U, by Otto Scharmer. He challenges leaders to look at problem-solving from an unconventional perspective. He argues that we are blind to what he calls the “source dimension” of action, which is the inner place from which individuals operate. By listening to the attitudes and opinions of others, leaders can invite those around them into the decision-making process and shape how their teams respond to situations.

As I've mulled over the article again and again over the past days, I think what really stuck with me was his explanation of the different levels of listening that we employ when interacting with one another. He desribes four levels of listening: download, factual, empathic, and generative.

Download and factual listening are superficial ways of listening, wherein we are either reconfirming (download) or disconfirming (factual) our previsouly held beliefs and knowledge. He challenges us to push past that and learn to listen to others on a deeper level, either empathically (e.g. walking in someone else’s shoes), but preferably generatively (i.e. going beyond mere communication into communion with someone).

Really, this theory is intrinsic to being an effective CED practitioner. By learning to listen to those we are working with and for, not only can we move from symptom level response to addressing systemic root level issues, we are achieving some of the very principles that define CED: participation and inclusiveness.

Very fun stuff, no?! Speaking of fun, and because I don't want to mislead anyone by allowing them to think all I do is study, here are a couple picture of the girls and me at B Side last night! It was a blast!

Stop Child Trafficking Walk in Montreal

Yesterday, over 100 people gathered in Philip's Square, downtown Montreal for the walk to Stop Child Trafficking!! Charlie and I were part of the planning committee that put together the event and it went very smoothly and very well, despite the drizzling rain that ever threatened to turn into showers. Many different community organisations were represented and Joy Smith and supporters of Bill C-268 were there as well.

The walk was a short circuit on Ste. Catherine Street and de Maisonneuve, and by the time we got back to the rally site, we had gained quite a few people! Joy Smith, Andree Ruffo and Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu were the main speakers at the rally and they were all very passionate about the issue of child trafficking. Many media outlets were present as well; here are some links to those articles and videos:
CTV article
CTV video (click on "Child Trafficking a Domestic Problem")
24H Montreal

The last debate on Bill C-268 will take place this Tuesday and the vote will be this Thursday. All parties but one are in favour of passing this bill; please email you MP to give them your support and encourage them to vote this through!

My first weekend as a grad student!

Last weekend was my first weekend at Southern New Hampshire University's School of Community Economic Development!!!

SNHU is located in Manchester, a small city of about 100,000 (although this does make it one of the largest cities in New England!) The city is known for its textile manufacturing industry, much like its English namesake, which was huge from the early 19th century until the 1930s.

It took Mom and me about 5 hours to drive down from Montreal, including a little mix-up at the border, when Mom blurted out that (a) I'm going to study in the U.S. although I don't have a student visa, and/but (b) it's ok because I'm an American citizen, though I had nothing to proove that statement. No surprise that the border official then said "Would you please pull over, ma'am?" We got it all sorted out and were on our way in no time. The thing is, even if I didn't have my American citizenship I wouldn't needa visa because I'm not going down to the States to live while I study. A fun little detour, though!

Thursday was a day-long orientation at the school. Lots of introductions, turns out I'm the only Canadian in the program this year, and academic and financial advising and so on. The CED program has two cohorts, national and international. The difference is that national CED students will study CED in the American context and plan to work in the U.S. International CED is for students who plan to work overseas (e.g. me!) or with international communities in the States (e.g. refugees, immigrants). So my cohort only has eight students, which is really nice because we'll get to know each other better and will have more opportunity for in-depth class discussions. Besides me there are two Americans, three Rwandese, a Liberian (though born in Guinea) and a Sudanese; such a diverse group, isn't it? I am so excited about our group!

The rest of the weekend was filled with class time: on Friday, I had a morning class on Principles, Practices and Policy of International CED. The professor is fantastic, and she's also my academic advisor! Her expertise is mainly in gender issues in CED; I have always been passionate about women's issues and gender equality, so I'm really glad I will be able to learn from her. The assignments for the course are really interesting, and I'm excited just for the fact that a lot of the course reading has been on my "to-read" bookshelf for a while!

On Saturday, I had a day long course on Project Design. One great component of the program is that, instead of writing a thesis to obtain my degree, I have to plan and implement a CED project right in Montreal!! How awesome is that? I will be doing my project in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, a very poor area in Montreal; my research will be on "Economic behaviours of families in the poorest census tracks in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where over 40% of the population lives under the LICO (Low Income Cut-Off)." The project will be research-based, so I can't tell you what projct I'll be doing yet!

On Sunday, I had 7 hours - that's right, SEVEN HOURS - of Accounting!! Some people took a waiver exam to get out of doing this course, some passed, most failed, and because I have no accounting background whatsoever, I didn't even bother taking the test. Although it was a long day, I really did enjoy it and find it exciting to start understanding the concepts and how to actally do accounting.

As you can imagine, I was echausted by the end of the weekend. Actually the picture above was taken on Friday night, so I was already exhausted by then! I'm glad I'm only taking three courses this semester, it will allow me to ease into the student thing and give me some extra time to do Chab Dai stuff and put in some hours with my part-time contract to make some money.

Thanks for all your encouragement. I'm really happy to be a student again, and feel right at home in this program. A la prochaine!

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!!

For my Grandpa's 80th birthday, my whole family got together to "Party like it's 1929"!!! We ate and drank and made toasts and made jokes and swam and kayaked and played games and had an all around blast. Here we all are. Almost no kids left, we're all so grown up ;)

The only not fun part (and when I say not fun, I mean kind of funny for everyone else) was when Charlie got stuck on top of the roof of the boat house because he got all the way up there and then panicked and couldn't jump off for a whole hour. He switched between standing up and sitting back down, but mostly he sat. In his defense, it's really high up (about 10 meters?) and on his way up his foot slid a little on the roof tiles. He couldn't go down the way he came up because of the whole slipping and falling onto the dock to his death thing, so the only way down was by jumping.


After a while, my cousin Jessica made a deal with Charlie that if she jumped off the second floor balcony, he would take the leap from the roof. She Jessica and Caitlyn joined forces... and Charlie stayed put of the roof for another half hour after they jumped.

And so there we stayed, me on the dock, encouraging and coaxing, and Charlie sitting on the roof, trying to stay calm. People came and went, but mostly stuck around, because all that time, they didn't want to miss the big event, as the more time he spent on the roof, the more suspense there was to see his jump. Finally, I decided drastic measures had to be taken - but there was no way I was going up there to jump with him because then we'd have two people stuck on the roof. So I talked him through some yoga breathing and actually got him to stand up. And just when we were all about to give up and leave him there to go have lunch, he propelled with his might and flung himself off the roof, shouting "I'm Batmaaaaaaaaan!!!"

And so ended the saga of the boat house jump, and everyone clapped and cheered and those who had missed it were very disappointed indeed. I was so proud of my honey :)

What I am Reading Today...

Benjamin Perrin is a prof at UBC, in the Faculty of Law, and he has been an important voice in Canada in the fight against human trafficking. He studied at McGill (yay!) among other universities and founded the Future Group, an NGO that combats human trafficking. In fact, it was a Future Group research paper that brought attention to the fact that Canada kind of sucks when it comes to human trafficking legislation and response and why the government is now making efforts to correct this.

In February of this year, Perrin wrote an article that was published in The Lawyers Weekly. The article is called:

Confronting Human Trafficking in Canada
"Human trafficking is a complex problem that is only beginning to be understood in Canada, and immigration lawyers can play a much greater role in responding to it."

It's an interesting article about Canadian law on human trafficking and how (surprise, surprise) we're late to the party of preventing and responding to it within our borders nad beyond. At least we now have a law against trafficking in persons (passed in 2005), but helping victims of trafficking, especially when they are foreigners in Canada, is a slow and frustrating process. It would help it they weren't treated like criminals, right? It seems so obvious, but unfortunately, victims are often arrested and detained and treated like illegal immigrants who have been smuggled into Canada, not trafficked.

Which brings us to the difference between trafficking and smuggling! It's quite simple, really. In general, the difference is found in the choice of the person being transported. A smuggled person retains control over his or her life and decisions; if ever the control is taken out of that person's hands, it becomes trafficking. Does that make sense?

Anyway, more on that later. And more on what I'm reading on human trafficking later as well...

10-Step Guide to Having an Awesome Beach Vacation

#1: Dig huge hole in sand on first day.


#2: Sit proudly in said hole.


#3: Bring much reading material to wile away the hours tanning.


#4: Hang out with cousins (first cousins, second cousins, cousins once removed, take your pick!)


#5: Play 10 cent skee-ball on the boardwalk.


#6:Play mini putt on the boardwalk and get a terrible score because you only play once a year.


#7: Eat a ginormous pickle from Blitz's.


#8: Go see where there was a beached whale and mourn over its untimely death.


#9: Get dressed up and go out with family to eat copious amounts of seafood.


#10: Go on a fantastic day trip to New York City...

... eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp in Times Square...

... and get picture taken with a portrait of Eloise in the Plaza.
Ooooooh, I love the Plaza!!

Chocolate Town!!

Chista and I just spent the week with our Mimi and Grandad in Pennsylvania, near the chocolate headquarters of the U.S., Hershey! Besides a fun trip to Chocolate World, all worth it for the free sample you get at the end of the tour, we also visited with some of their friends in their retirement community, some of whom have known us since before we were born; in fact, they saw my Mom grow up in New Town Square, PA! We also played many games of Hand and Foot, a favourite card game with our grandparents. Most fun was the musical evening we attended with about 400 seniors at their community center, which included performances of songs from broadway shows such as Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma, Spamalot, Hello Dolly, and Woman of the Year. It was great! I had great chats with my Grandad and I was sad to leave yesterday morning.

Today, Dad and I are spending the day at Princeton, where he is a visiting scholar using their Carl Barth library. Here he is working under a portrait of Betsy Stockton, the first black female missionary. Princeton has a really beautiful campus and I can't help but feel academically inspired! Alas, Ivy League may not be in the cards for me, but I am very much looking forward to starting my Masters in just over a month!

Tomorrow, we're going back to Ocean City, NJ, where Christa is now, and will be joined by the rest of our family (Mom, Charlie, Jen & Nic) for a week of beach and sun and family awesomeness! Let's hope it doesn't rain!

Weekend at Lake Anne

This past weekend we spent up at Dan's cabin near Morin Heights. It was beautiful! The weather didn't cooperate all weekend but gave us a few good moments here and there. We went swimming, played frisbee, played board games, and ate our group body weight equivalent in yummy food. We had a blast with our friends. We're thinking of going back up there in a few weeks for our book club, turning our meeting into a whole weekend of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies fun! Hopefully we won't run into any actual zombies in the woods there.

Charlie and Charles were the first brave ones to jump into the lake.
The rest of us followed, and froze our butts off, a couple hours later.

The girls! Sunday morning was sunny and beautiful so we sat on the dock for a while.

Cheers!

Chab Dai Canada

The Chab Dai Canada logos are official! We need to celebrate the small victories in this new challenge, because setting up a charitable organisation is more difficult than it seems. Our colleague in California who does such a great job at the communications designed these new Chad Dai logos, and Canada is being added to Cambodia and U.S.A.

We're so happy we can stay a part of the Chab Dai team, we really enjoyed working with them and they influenced us a great deal. Although we have no idea where we'll be headed after I finish my Masters, staying in touch with them through our projects here will be a big perk to the job!

Us with the Chab Dai team at Ta Prohm, at the Angkor temples.

So for those of you who are wondering what exactly those projects are, here's a brief list of Chab Dai Canada's goals:

• Research domestic issues of trafficking.
• Raise awareness of issues of sexual exploitation and trafficking, domestically and globally, particularly in the ecumenical community;
• Engage people in taking action;
• Network with NGOs, people, churches, and coalitions already working on these issues;
• Identify and apply for funding for projects in both Cambodia and Canada.

Until next time, keep us in your thoughts and keep in touch!

Back from Winnipeg!

We just spent a great week in Winnipeg with our friends and family! I've never eaten so much in my life! We had good visits and it was so nice to stay with Charlie's parents. We were also there for Dave and Jenn's wedding. Dave and Charlie have known each other their whole lives.

We had a blast at the wedding. Isn't Jen gorgeous?!!

Us with Charlie's family and Char's best friend, Jeremy's family. Lorraine and Louise are two of the infamous 4 L's who have been best friends since high school!

BBQ at John and Charlene's. Their oldest daughter, Danica, here with John, Phil and Lorraine.

I got to spend some time with Kim, my college roommate. She lives in Winnipeg with her husband Alex and their two kids, Sofia and Tegan.

A walk in Assinaboine Park with Mom and Dad Brake.

Graduate School Here I Come!!

I got in!

Starting in September, I will be studying International Community Economic Development at SNHU. I will be taking scary courses like Accounting, Economics, and Financial Management, and instead of writing a thesis, I have to implement a CED project. And one of the best parts is that I get to stay in Montreal! It is a weekend program; I go to the New Hampshire campus once a month for three days and do the bulk of my work from home.

You can check out more about the program here: http://www.snhu.edu/146.asp.

Charlie took me out for a celebratory dinner last week!