Details

So you've now either read the first post and wondered why it ended so suddently, skipped the first post because it was too gushy, or skipped the first post because you already knew what it had to say. And so I present the second part.

On May 10th, I leave Charlottetown, PEI, for Paris, France. From there, I somehow get to Frankfurt, Germany, where I will meet up with Katie, Linden, Graham, Chelsea, and Josie, who will be getting off a very early flight. The six of us will then spend just under two weeks as tourist, visiting Frankfurt, London, and Paris. On May 23rd, I meet up with Emily, who will be coming from visiting Dublin, and we fly together from Paris to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Burkina Faso is located in Western Africa, bordering Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Benin, and Togo. It is landlocked, and has three main rivers running through it, the Mouhoun, Nakambé, and Nazinon. Former known as Upper Volta, the country was a French colony until 1960. Currently operating as a Parliamentary Republic, Burkina Faso is lead by President Blaise Compaoré, who has been re-elected every election since he first took head of the country in 1987 after a coup d'état. Current law states that he will not be eligible to run again in 2010, when the next election is scheduled to occur, because of his repeat holding of the position. The official language of the Burkinabé (inhabitants of Burkina Faso) is French, though tribal languages are also common. The literacy rate in the country is very low, and the country has a strong arts scene, hosting prominent international craft and film festivals. Ninety percent of the population relies on subsistence agriculture, with most of this being in cotton, peanuts, shea nuts, sesame, sorghum, millet, corn, rice, and raising livestock. The country is considered to be very stable, safe, and welcoming.

Emily and I will be working with an organization called Bridges of Hope for 10 weeks, based in the Boura region, near the Ghanaian border (Google Maps has it, if anyone is curious: search 'Boura, Burkina Faso'). Both of us will be doing assesments of local organizations to determine what Bridges of Hope can do to further their work. Emily will be working with small local businesses and organizations, and I with local schools. Bridges of Hope is an organization based out of Lethbridge, Alberta. Emily learned of the organization at a conference in Ottawa, and decided to set it up as an RC internship. RC requires international placements to be in pairs, so I am unbelievably excited to be travelling and spending this summer with Emily. On its website, Bridges of Hope describes its vision: " To enhance the capability and productivity of indigenous organizations, leadership, and people who are committed to poverty relief and community empowerment." The organization describes its guiding principles as being based in dignity, respect, and capacity building.

I'm going to make a point to direct you to Emily's blog, she has also been writing some background information, and we should both end up providing different views of similar experiences, which I guess will be interesting. I'm also going to point out that I have listed links to the blogs of my classmates' travels, on the side of the page.

Introductions

Sometimes people start at the beginning.

My name is Kristina. I've just finished my 5th semester at the University of New Brunswick's Renaissance College in Fredericton, Canada. And I am soon going very far away to learn more than I can understand.

I was born and grew up on Prince Edward Island. I went to school, grades 1 through 12, in the French Immersion program with people I absolutely loved. In grade 7, I joined the band, playing Trombone, and met some very talented musicians, and a number of good friends. After high school, I attended Shad Valley in Calgary, and met 50 increadibly intelligent people. In the fall of 2005, I started a program I was not sure I could finish, and after 2 days knew that the people and their wisdom would hold me in no matter what. I'm hoping all this means that the world is a place where you never stop meeting good people.

I am attending university taking a program called Renaissance College. Its a small faculty with 20 to 25 people in each class. After 3 years and two summers, we graduate with a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Leadership, which means we have the tools to understand a huge breadth of information and ideas, and we understand how we relate to this, and how and where we can create change. To graduate, we must be deemed to have reached a level of competence, and to have grown, in RC's six learning outcomes: Effective Citizenship, Knowing Oneself and Others, Multi-Literacy, Personal Well-Being, Problem Solving, and Task-Oriented Social Interaction. To RC, this means we can be leaders. I've already said that I initially wasn't sure if i could finish the program: it was a far cry from the Science degree I had always assumed I would have, and I wasn't sure it was for me. This uncertainty about finishing holds true today, but in an opposite way: I have no idea how it could ever be over. I love what I am learning here.

Part of what makes RC unique is its focus on experiential learning: learning by doing. To live this out, RC has two internships as part of the program requirements. The first, the Canadian Internship, is working, someplace in Canada, with six aims: to develop leadership skills by leading a small project; to work with a mentor and observe leadership in action; to learn, through work experience, about career and personal interests; to develop technical and professional skills in an area of interest; to do work of value for an organization, to become involved in that organization, and to understand its role; and, finally, to learn about oneself through new experiences and situations.

The second internship is International. The summer after second year, students find volunteer placements to do work in cultures significantly different from home and often in different languages, with the aims of gaining greater understanding of the world and its variety of people, and to experience new perspectives, challenges, and the functioning of other societies. Because of this, I have friends travelling all over the world: Ecuador, Italy, Vietnam, Ghana, Slovenia, Bhutan, and the United Kingdom. Me, I'm off to Burkina Faso with a good friend of mine, Emily.