pre-departure learning days

I arrived in Toronto last Wednesday for what EWB calls pre-departure learning. This basically means sharing a (tiny) house with 21 other JF's and taking part in a week of activities in preparation for our placements. It has been pretty intense so I won't try to write about every thing that happened but these are some of the things that have been on my mind for the past days.

We started the week looking at the big questions: what is development and who are we working for? We were challenged to ask random people in the street to define development and the two guys I talked to gave me a really good starting point: development is implementing changes to ensure basic human rights. The more we thought about it though, the more elements to wanted to include in our working definition of development: sustainability, ownership, dignity, empowerment, gender equality, freedom, choice, access to resources and knowledge, equal opportunity. Who does it? What is the best approach? What does development mean to a family living in poverty? Where do I as an individual fit into all this? Day one and there were already so many questions to be asked!



As the week went on we talked about everything from trying to understand the livelihood of a typical Ghanaian to how to stay away from diarrhea and malaria. We learned about what it is to do development in Ghana and the situations we could encounter from Cat and Levi who have worked with EWB for some time now. In the usual EWB fashion, we looked at frameworks and learning tools, we communicated through buzzwords such as "capacity building" and "impact", and managed to pack sessions in more than ten hours per day. The deeper we dug into things the more I realized the things I didn't know and the importance of questioning the things I think I know. Somewhere in there I managed to see the downtown area of Toronto and get to know some of the JFs going to Ghana and Malawi (oh, and get some sleep!)



So am I ready? I am definitely in the right frame of mind and I am ready to make the best out of it. I still don't know where in Ghana I will be or who I will live with or how exactly I will help people at KITE be better at what they do. However, this week helped me realized that there are basically two skills I can bring with me for my placement: an ability to think critically and an attitude for learning. The first one I realized is extremely necessary when trying to understand the complexities of the challenges we are trying to tackle; and the second one will be what ultimately determines the success of my placement. As I get ready to take the plane to Accra tomorrow I can't help feeling a little nervours and excited about the next months. I can't wait to arrive in Tamale and go through in-country learning, learn more about KITE and begin to experience Ghana! Until then, I'll to back to packing and getting ready to leave Toronto tomorrow night.