April 30th

For the Jfs: http://africansignals.com/

And now for the not-JF folk:

Firstly, sorry for not updating more regularly; school and what-not.

Secondly, I thought I'd do a quick run-down of what exactly it is I'm and with whom for those who don't quite know.

Engineers Without Borders is a charity organization that, while originally very engineering oriented, is now a very soft-skill based organization. I mean this in that it utilizes sociological practices and organizational skills over technical expertise of any engineering background. Granted, I have the urge to try and build a windmill in my spare time overseas. But that's probably something unique to me.
My placement is with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Actually, today we did a training on impact which definitely helped me get a clearer picture of what I'm doing. Previously the only picture I had was that I was training government workers to train farmers in a curriculum entitled “Agriculture as a Business.” The impact lesson put the final goal of this placement into focus for me though. I'd thought of what the final goal would be, namely that farmers would be taught to utilize their farm as a means of generating profit and improve their livelihoods, but I hadn't really identified this as a distinct point in space or time. Thus I was left trying to draw a line from my placement activities to an effected change that I hadn't really pinned down as my end goal because I was considering it too far away from my placement. I.E. I wasn't imaginging my placement being part of acheiving this, but rather part of starting this. Instead I'm very much feeling that I'm an integral part of this process now, and my placement will be drawing a clear line from point A (my feet hitting the ground) to point B (improved rural livelihoods).

There were quite a few other learnings today, but I'm a wee bit tight for time sadly. I will give a fuller update later this week!

-W