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Tag: Independent Research

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By iobrien1093

This past week, I finally submitted an  Independent Research Proposal to my Capstone Project supervisor. For my capstone I am creating a basic literacy curriculum for New Chapter’s After School Program in Phumlani Village, which does not have an educational component at this time. Since nearly 70% of Phumlani’s residents are unemployed and do not have the means to pay school fees, many children do not attend primary school. This reality exists in townships all over South Africa, and as a result, nearly 80 percent of South African learners do not develop basic reading skills by the time they reach Grade 5. Those learners will not likely succeed in secondary-school education, which will in turn compromise their options for post-school learning, career opportunities, and general wellbeing in life.

Phumlani’s literacy program will take place either at the community center or in the local library and will target primary school learners from Kindergarten to Grade 3, as well as children who have never been enrolled in school. I am creating a handbook with a curriculum that includes lesson plans for weekly literacy workshops as well as workbook activities and short stories that coincide with each workshop. I am also creating an Indigogo webpage that will provide the means for printing and for each child to receive his or her own workbook to bring home. Ideally, I would like this handbook to be the initial step in the development of a larger mentorship program in which New Chapter would partner with a local high school to form a one-on-one mentorship program using the handbook as the curriculum. The greatest challenge to this program is that most of the children speak three languages: Xhosa, Afrikaans, and English. Their levels of English vary drastically, so this program will not just be a literacy program, but a literacy program for ESL learners. As I speak neither Afrikaans nor Xhosa it would be nearly impossible for me to formally tutor the children myself, which is why I’m hoping that New Chapter will be able to partner with locals who speak the children’s home language. Thankfully, Malcolm Josephs, the founder of New Chapter, speaks Afrikaans fluently, knows nearly all of the children in Phumlani as well as their families, and will be able to help me establish the children’s English skills for the purposes of forming the curriculum.

Although I am creating the handbook for future purposes, I am also working with the children informally on a weekly basis, in order to better understand their learning styles and what activities are able to successfully motivate them to learn. I would like to get the name and grade level of each child who attends the afterschool program. Then I will create a log of their general literacy levels. This would be helpful to the future volunteers who will work with specific children. Once I’ve established the baseline literacy levels I will split the children into two groups based on reading skill, one group focusing on basic phonetic skills and the alphabet and the other more advanced group focusing on improving reading comprehension. I would work with each group for an hour each week. At the end of the semester I would interview the children to understand if their attitudes about reading have changed.

This week I am distributing consent forms to the parents of the children who will participate in the program. Later, this week once the signed forms are returned, I will distribute a short survey to assess the children’s attitudes about reading. I foresee that my research plan will change as I begin more hands-on work with the children. I’m expecting my greatest challenge to be the language barrier, but also that some of the kids are very shy about answering questions. These next few weeks will be hectic, and I’ll have to adapt my research along the way, but I’m relieved to finally have a foundation for my project and to be able to start working.

 

Isabel

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By haleymb

 

turtle
Sea Turtle
turtle nests
Sea Turtle Nests

The bus was scheduled to leave at 8:00, but nothing leaves on time in Salvador, so we’ll be fine, right? It was 7:45 and we finally jumped in the car of my friend’s host dad. Red lights, lanes, and other cars go unnoticed in Salvador, and we zoomed through the city. We approached a large intersection where the host dad waved down a bus and told us to get out. At 7:59, we jumped out of the car into a crowded intersection and onto a moving bus that said “Praia do Forte.” Two and a half hours later, we made it to paradise. The small touristy town was just what we needed to get away from the crowded streets of Salvador for a weekend.

Beyond the lovely beaches, this town is home to Projeto Tamar, a sea turtle conservatory. Here, they hatch over 400,000 baby sea turtles every year and then safely transport them to the ocean. This was an event I was able to witness! At 5:00, the event titled “opening the nest” begins. We went to the nest area and the staff members gave a speech (I can’t really tell you what they said), and began to remove the protection from one of several nests. As they started to brush sand away, little tiny sea turtles smaller than a playing card began to poke up through the sand. First we saw only a few, but suddenly, it seemed as though the nest exploded. Dozens and dozens started popping up and flopping about on the sand. They brought some over for us to touch – their shells were not yet hardened. They were so adorable, all I could think about was how to put one in my pocket to take home. The turtles were then put into a large bucket, and we all walked over to the beach. With the sun setting in the background, they let children hold the turtles and then set them down several feet away from the water. It was amazing how all of the turtles knew exactly where to go. Some more slowly than others, waddled into the water, letting the waves catch and pull them into the sea. It was one of the most beautiful events I have experienced.

baby sea turtles
Baby Sea Turtles

 

It’s amazing where only a few hours of travel can get you. The conservation projects, beautiful beaches, and relaxing lifestyles of places surrounding the large cities is so fun to experience. Plus, practicing Portuguese is even more of a challenge and a must in these areas, as we have to rely on others to know where we are going, rather than our own knowledge of the city. It was interesting trying to communicate with locals and new bus systems. I had some doubt in our ability, especially with our late start to the trip, but we did it!

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By lizzhart

Thus far we've been on 4 Thai government hospital tours, 1 private hospitals, 2 community home stays, 1 interview of a sex worker, and a tour of the Laos health care system. All these visits and tours have given a broad understanding of Thailand social issues and burden of disease. Thailand faces an interesting health burden with a triple threat of communicable disease, non communicable disease, and traffic accidents. Additionally, they have to balance being a middle income country with the pressures and stressors of increasing business and media presence. In the absence of a strong breast feeding campaign, Thailand and Laos had a major problem in which mothers were feeding their babies sweetened condensed milk and coffee creamer instead of baby formula. There were no regulations on the advertisements for these products, so mothers were mislead by logos and images that resembled baby formula ads. These kind of mix ups and mis-communications are common in developing countries and require strong health promotion.

The issue I'm most interested in right now is the lack of sex education in Thailand and the high rates of teen pregnancy. Despite most other health indicating statistics improving in thailand, teen pregnancy had increased in the last 10 years. There are a lot of social and cultural factors that compound the issue of teen pregnancy. In Thailand, if a teen in a public high school becomes pregnant she is expelled from school. She can pay to enroll in a special school for mothers but cannot continue her education at a normal high school. Many don't go to the alternative school and their education ends prematurely. This limits their job opportunities and chances of improving their socioeconomic status.

Part if the issue is that thailand only recently started implementing sex education in their public schools. Sex education starts around 5th grade but is limited by the ministry of education to just 8 hours a year. Also, the classes take a biological approach and ignore the emotional and relationship aspects of sex. While Thailand very liberal in some ways, such as their healthcare system, in other ways they can be very conservative. Sex education has typically only been for married couples and there still exists a cultural stigma against teaching teens about sex.

It has been hard to find out any information about sex education and teen pregnancy. Academic resources are limited and no health care provider seems to want to talk about it when we visit hospitals and clinics. It's going to require a lot if digging to write my research paper. However, if I can get a better understanding if the systems and stigmas that impact the issue, it will really help me if I choose to make my community project related to Thai teen pregnancy rates. I hope that in the next few weeks I can get some real answers on the situation and create a strong research background for potential projects and interventions in the communities.

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By iobrien1093

Exactly, three weeks ago I landed at Cape Town International Airport where I nervously exited the plane, unsure of what I was supposed to do next. To my surprise, I encountered fifteen singing and dancing CIEE staff members waiting to welcome me and the other CIEE students to South Africa.  Three weeks later, the staff’s enthusiasm hasn’t waned a bit; it’s hard to feel anything but excited when I’m around them. Thus far, my group has done everything from cable car-ing up Table Mountain for a gorgeous sunset, to exploring Langa Township, to touring Robben Island and learning about Mandela’s life and imprisonment. The weeks have flown by, but at the same time I can’t believe all that we’ve accomplished.

I’m studying abroad this spring with CIEE’s Service Learning Program in Cape Town, South Africa. Starting Monday, I’ll be taking 4 academic courses related to poverty and community development, including: Intensive ixiXhosa, Social Research Methods, Community Partnership: Theory and Engagement, and Poverty and Development. These courses are different from many of the Human Services and Public Health courses I’ve taken back home, as they involve experiential learning and reflection. Alongside my academic courses, I’ll also be completing an independent research and Capstone Project at a service site within the community. The program offers the opportunity to choose one of seven different service sites, with focus areas ranging from recycling to tuberculosis and medicine. Twice a week, I will be spending the day at New Chapter Foundation, a community center that serves nearly 60 children, ages 6-18, in under-developed Phumlani Village. New Chapter Foundation helps children and young adults realize their potential by building academic life skills, offering relevant training and development opportunities, enhancing talents, and empowering youth to live a Life of Purpose. The community center offers a day care and after-care program meant to keep children both active and safe between school and the time when they’ll have parental supervision. While at New Chapter I will be split my time between the office where I will assist with administrative tasks, and the daycare where I’ll assist with academic programs and with supervising the children. For my capstone project I would like to undertake research into establishing a library for the children or into enhancing the aftercare literacy program in some way. I begin serving at New Chapter this week and will be able to see then which projects would be most beneficial to the staff and to the community.

I chose CIEE’s service learning in Cape Town program for two reasons. The first was that I’ve always been drawn to the idea of participating in a less traditional program. I’m hoping to work in international community development after graduation and I thought service-learning in Cape Town would give me a better understanding of my interests as well as the exposure to problems impacting underdeveloped communities. I’ve traveled abroad before but I wanted a program that would push me completely out of my comfort zone. In Cape Town, I can experience the culture and the languages of completely different communities through voluntarism and hands on service. Secondly, I chose this program for its structure. It’s a smaller program, with only 23 students from all over the U.S. We take all of our classes together, we’re guided through the capstone project together, and we even live together on the same floor of an apartment building. I’ll also be serving at New Chapter with two other girls from my program. This program is the perfect way to break out of my comfort zone while still feeling like I have a solid family behind me to depend on. We’ve all grown so close in just a short time. I can’t imagine spending my time abroad in any other way.

Can’t wait to see what this week has in store!

Isabel

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By lizzhart

So much has happened in the past month: a homestay in a slum community in Khon Kaen, an interview with a sex worker, an exclusive opportunity to enter a Burmese migrant worker village. My experiences so far have been incredible and unique, a direct result of the type of program I am on with CIEE.

I chose CIEE’s public health program in Thailand because I’m a major in public health, looking to get some department electives, but the program is truly compatible with all majors and interests. Lectures so far have spent a lot of time going over the basics of public health and the Thai/American health systems, but we are now starting to delve into community health issues such as HIV, dengue fever, and liver fluke. While lectures are interesting enough, it’s the time spent in the communities, interviewing villagers and health volunteers, that makes this abroad program.

Today I spent 4 hours in a closed off, Burmese village on the property of one of Khon Kaen’s largest fishnet factories. Outsiders are typically not let past security, due in part to the legal status of some of the workers, but also to prevent an outsider influence from inducing protests about worker living conditions. On an offhanded offer, we hopped in the back of a pick up truck of a woman who worked at a community hospital near the factory. She was going in to provide a sex and pregnancy education workshop to the women of the village.

After interviewing the village leaders and community members we learned a lot about the education, health, and social issues of the village. In the second half of the semester we need to pick one community and design a public health related project or intervention. Though it could be very difficult to sustain access to this community, I think implementing a project in this community would be an incredible experience and a huge help to such a disenfranchised group.

Side note: I ate crickets. And boiled blood chunks. I don’t have much to say about this. Also, chicken tendons are different from chicken tenders. Very. Very. Different.

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By juliaraewagner

This week, we started working on our country case studies. As the sustainability nerd on board, I immediately signed up to examine the urban environment of Ahmedabad.

While Ahmedabad has a long legacy of industry, in 1992, the city opened up to capitalism in a big way, inviting in foreign industries to settle down by doling out incentives. Soon enough, indsutrial estates sprouted up all over the city, most of which continue to grow today. My group and I decided that we couldn't examine the urban environment without understanding the disposal of waste and pollution.

Our faculty advisors partnered us with some local environmental institutions, and they connected us to some industries around the city. One thing that surprised me about our visits was that all of these factory owners and public officials were open to meeting with us, even on short notice. It may have been the Gujarati tradition of hospitality or simply the fact that the industry barons simply did not feel threatened by a bunch of college students. Whatever the reason, we couldn't help but notice that we were given access to the behind-the-scenes that we would never have experienced in the United States.

First we toured the chemical waste treatment center of the city where all of the industries send their effluent. The city has built a massive pipeline to transport it. Next we traveled to a dye factory where we saw the water going through its primary treatment; the end product, a frothy liquid with an orange hue, certainly didn't seem to be too clean. Finally, we visited the discharge point where all of the water is released into the river. This site as definitely the most striking as the thick, black water exiting the pipes did not serve to convince us that the water was at all fit to drink. Most striking were the agricultural fields sitting on the other side of the river.

It's easy to point fingers and make claims that India simply does not do enough to keep its natural resources safe. What is harder to recognize is that these problems occur all over the world, even in the US. We quickly forget about all of the Superfund sites and chemical spills like the one that happened in West Virginia recently. American industries might be more stealthy about how they handle waste, but our country too has a long legacy of pollution.

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By dpmitchel

I completed my weeks of observation at St. Mary’s Hospital and I definitely learned so much! As my aim was to gain a holistic understanding of the implementation of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV policy into practice, I spent time in many wards and departments of the hospital. I shadowed doctors, nurses, and counselors in the antenatal clinic, a visiting OB/GYN from one of St. Mary’s referral hospitals, doctors and nurse midwives in the maternity ward, nurse midwives in the Midwifery and Obstetric Unit (MOU), a doctor from the pediatrics and nursery wards, and an HIV counselor in the MOU. I really got a unique chance to learn about the health system in South Africa, health professionals’ views on their system and PMTCT, and a plethora of information about obstetrics.

There certainly were challenges throughout my time at the hospital; for one, most of the communication between healthcare professional and patient was in Zulu. I was glad for my 7-week intensive Zulu class from SIT, as even a preliminary understanding was helpful to build connections with professionals and patients alike. I was grateful for the people I shadowed who clued me in on patient issues and provided me with in-depth explanations of medical conditions for my learning purposes.

As far as PMTCT goes, it was very interesting to see the most recent South African PMTCT guidelines (from the beginning of 2013) actually implemented in practice. I won’t bore with a long explanation of the program, but it involves testing all mothers for HIV status, providing them with counseling and antiretroviral therapy (ART), supplying HIV-exposed newborns with ART prophylaxis, and following up on those newborns to ensure that the virus is not transmitted to them. Getting a chance to observe all of those policies firsthand was invaluable.

The last step in the ISP process is now to compose a paper about my Learnership at St. Mary’s that will be somewhere between 30-70 pages. By the end of my write-up I can definitely say that I have a good grasp on PMTCT policy in South Africa. Hopefully I can take the information I’ve learned here and take it back to the DC to do some sort of comparative research to our PMTCT programs in the States; that way I’ll be able to give back some of the knowledge that I’ve gained by shadowing at St. Mary’s.

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By kneander

Well its over, after a month of interviews, shifts, and EMS courses and conferences i have finally completed my Independent Study Project. The final product was a 44 page research paper in Spanish detailing the structures, strengths weaknesses and challenges of the Emergency Response System in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in addition to an overview and introduction to the system the paper also included documented the three various systems: public, private and governmental as well as descriptions of normal shifts with organizations in each of these sectors.

Though i am incredibly happy and proud to have completed this project, there are still things that I wish had been covered that unfortunately were not. In the majority of my interviews and shifts with  various organizations I heard about a plan for mutual aid system as well as a movement to create a 911 like unified dispatch system for the city. Though these two important development projects were mentioned frequently it was impossible for me to get any concrete information on the topics. Other than being able to get substantial information about these two projects my only other significant research challenge was getting meaning full time with patients and their families to ask about their impressions and experiences of the system as a whole. This was challenging for me for two reasons, firstly the nature of the emergency health system in Bolivia limits provider patient contact much more than the American system and secondly because of the very limited number of people who utilize the emergency response system instead of transporting themselves to a clinic or hospital. I overcame these two research challenges my modifying my research question and focusing instead on the structure of the current emergency response system. By only exploring the structural strengths and weaknesses of the emergency response system I was able to write a comprehensive research paper about one component of the system instead of a being forced to omit important opinions, experiences and developments that I would not have been able to gather in the limited time I had.

Over all this project was an incredible experience, living and working independently in Santa Cruz was a highlight of my semester and i look forward to bringing the knowledge and experiences I gained through this research project back to my community. I hope that my paper and presence in Santa Cruz over the past month will help the organizations I worked with and look forward to continuing to assist them in any way I can upon my return to the states.

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By kneander

Hello All!

I'm writing to you today from Santa Cruz de la Sierra two weeks into a month of independant research. Its been two weeks packed with meetings, overnight ambulance shifts and medical conferences. Working, researching and living independently in a new city has been a challenging and exciting experience. Santa Cruz, Bolivia's largest city and the economic hub of the country is located on the edge of the Amazon basin in a climate much more tropical than that of Cochabamba.

Over the past two weeks I've met with various different emergency response organizations including aeronautical firefighters, the national police firefighting and ambulance unit as well as various different private and volunteer ambulance and fire fighting organizations. Generally these organizations have been really receptive to my inquiries for interviews or to tag along for shifts, though these various experiences I have begun to get a sense of the emergency response system with in the Santa Cruz metropolitan area. Over this next week I will wrap up my interviews and ride alongs and begin composing my paper, summarizing my findings about the system as a whole through stories about the various different organizations with whom I have interacted.

Its crazy to think that there are only 16 days left of this program and that between now and December 7th, when i am scheduled to return to Cochabamba, I need to complete my research,  my paper and provide the published the document to the organizations that i have met and worked with over the past few weeks. I am anxious and excited to see what the next two weeks of research hold for me and look forward to sharing the stories with you in my next post.

Until next time!

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As I have mentioned in past posts, during my time in the Dominican Republic I have been working with a community school associated with a local organization called Oné Respe. The topic of my research was the causes and consequences of the violence within the children of the third grade class. I found that the more violent children tend to have siblings, receive hits from their parents as punishment (not necessarily hard or rough ones), and have had problems of violence in their families at rates slightly higher than the less violent children. I also found that the parents of the more violent children talk to their children about violence slightly less than the parents of the less violent children. In learning about the feelings of the children about the issue, I found that all of them, violent and non-violent feel sad and bad about the violence that goes on in their class. They all know the difference between right and wrong and that they should treat their classmates well and with respect, even the ones who choose not to at times.

There were a number of challenges to face this semester, many having to do with everything being in Spanish while it is a language I am still learning. The greatest challenge; however, was simply disciplining myself to get everything done—in terms of my research, my project, and other school assignments—while not having much free time, and still enjoying this country. This challenge never disappeared but I tried my best to face it by setting time frames to get certain tasks done and incentivizing myself with little things such as trips to the local frozen yogurt shop or a day or weekend trip to the beach.

It is hard to say that that I feel like I have made such a difference in my community because I feel that through service-learning, the student volunteering often ends up learning a lot more from their community than what they give to the community. Of course, I do hope that I made a difference. I hope that through my research, the school will have a better idea of how to combat school violence, so that the children feel safer, are able to learn better, and can grow up stopping the cycles of violence within their communities.

The time spent with my community and the research that I have done shaped my study abroad experience in a great way. It gave me the special chance to get to know real people and real life in a community, opposed to only experiencing the country on a more typical study abroad level. I must also say that, although I am an American, a foreigner, it was such a unique experience not having my skin bring any extra attention to me.  It has been pretty special to complete a significant part of my higher education in a country where so many people resemble my family and me, as I am used to furthering my education surrounded by mainly white faces with whom I am always a part of the minority (proudly a racial minority! but this experience was still special in that respect).

When I return to GW, I absolutely plan on continuing my commitment to community. Majoring in Human Services gives me plenty of great opportunities participate in service-learning courses, and I am looking forward to the two that I will be taking next semester. I do not know where I will be working at the moment, but I would love to work with Spanish speaking teens so that I can continue practicing my Spanish and work with a different age group, but one that I still feel I can relate to very well.  Wherever I work and with whomever, I am excited to learn more and keep gaining tools to become a stronger, smarter, and more useful person in this world. My study abroad experience helped me with this, but it will only matter if I make sure that I keep growing.

My study abroad experience in the DR has come to a close! What did I learn, what was special about my experience, and what will I do next? Check it out! #GWU #GWAbroad

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