Pre-departure Thoughts

With less than a day before we leave, the excitement is really starting to kick in! I'm not looking forward to the lengthy 13 hour flight on top of two other flights and a layover, but this will be all worth it once we land in Dhaka. From there we are given a few days to settle before driving 7 hours north to our home base for 4 weeks in Rangpur.

We've already been provided an itinerary for this service learning experience and I am getting excited to see all the development projects, education programs and healthcare clinics coordinated through RDRS Bangladesh. Already on the first day in Rangpur we will be visiting a rehabilitation center, which take in young women who have been victims of abuse and provide them protection, counceling and training, allowing them to maintain their independence when they are ready to return to community. I expect this first exposure to be especially difficult and impactful while at the same time inspiring optimism through the numerous success story of this program.

After participating in this service learning experience I hope to be exposed to a broad array of services collectively being applied to address the social needs of each individual community we visit. I am personally interested in practicing in Public Health and will likely focus my attention on these services coordinated by RDRS, but I realize that all the services offered are equally important in targeting the social disparity experienced around the globe. As I have no experience and little knowledge of the social services offered in impoverished nations, I hope to be exposed to as much variety and at all levels of administration from coordination and planning to the application at the local level. Lastly I am looking forward to be immersed in Bangladeshi culture and gain experience communicating in a foreign country despite all our differences.

Expect to see many photos in my upcoming entries!!!

Sincerely,

Evan

Pre-departure Thoughts

Working with an organization such as the RDRS is a completely new experience to me and I can't wait to learn about the developments they have made and the impacts it has on the community. I hope to learn how communities have received their programs and how they have adjusted to accommodate the projects involved. I hope to understanding how two separate parties can work in tandem to achieve common goals, and how they can influence each other to attain better results.

This trip to Bangladesh promises many experiences which I look forward to sharing with the group. I hope that we can exchange thoughts and opinions on the various topics which we will come across. This will demonstrate the ways one event could be experienced differently but each of us. 

I hope to gain a deeper understanding of the people, their culture, politics and religion and how these aspects are intertwined in their daily lives. By understanding this, I too can apply this to my life, and learn how I can achieve a balance in all aspects of life.

I look forward to the culture, the music, conversations, dance, sport and the food. I really feel that these social aspects are a close reflection of the national pride and show what's important to the Bangladeshis. 

Pre-Departure Thoughts

Pre-departure Thoughts

When considering why I want to participate in this experience I come up with a range of reasons. At the heart of it though I want to learn and I want to experience. This trip seems like an amazing opportunity to do both while helping in a way that is not pitying or ignorant and focuses on learning through the context of Bangladesh, not as a Westerner coming in to fix things which appeals deeply to me.

My personal goals and objectives for participation in the trip for Bangladesh are fairly simple. As someone who has lived a comfortable life in a first world country I have had a fairly limited range of life experiences. I have been a student in an education system almost my entire life which encourages involvement and contributing back to society but the ways in which I can do that as an equal, and also learn through the process are more limited than I would like. That is not to say that they are unrewarding at all, but just limited. In participating in this program I hope to gain a deeper understanding of the lives and cultures of people I meet in Bangladesh but also understand how I as one person can not only help but also learn from them in a reciprocal relationship. I want to travel, learn and give back but I do not want to be partaking in what was termed the “cowboy” approach as described by Komives and Wagner. I do not want to be some ignorant Westerner coming in, imposing my way and then leaving. I want to be an equal, working with equals, to make lasting social change.

I am not sure if I could narrow it down to even a few things I hope to learn. I really have no idea what to expect and just want to learn as much as I can while I am there. I am quite interested in seeing how NGOs such as RDRS implement their programs, what is involved and what makes them successful and long lasting. I also hope to learn more about social issues and their root causes. Ideally I hope to come back with a deeper appreciation for many of the services I have access to and make use of. I hope to come back with a more defined skill set that I can apply to making social change here in Manitoba.

The social change issue that I hope to learn the most about and work on during the trip is access to health care. I aspire to a career in medicine and it is easy to say that healthcare is a fundamental resource in creating social change against poverty and lack of education but I hope to personally see how this happens.  I hope to come back knowing much more about this and the role health care can play in changing people’s lives especially in a place such as Bangladesh. I am also very interested in learning more about the Adavasis in Bangladesh and how they are treated. Through reading blogs of past participants there have been similarities drawn between the Adivasi and the First Nations of Canada, which I am very interested in learning more about, as it is a social change issue that I personally think is very important here in Canada.

Pre- depature thoughts

One of my goals is to be an active participant in every aspect of the program and learn as much as possible. In order to learn from new experiences and situations, I intent to ask lots of questions, so I can understand as much as possible. This directly relates to another goal which would is getting better at reflecting and learning from my own experiences at a deeper level. In El Salvador, we did nightly reflections as a group, which was really helpful at making me think on a deeper level and about things I wouldn’t have thought about. For this trip, I would also like to start doing some reflecting on my own and maybe trying a journal to write my thoughts down.

I hope to learn a lot about the culture of Bangladesh both in pre- departure meetings, my own research, and experiencing it while being there. Experiencing culture shock, being a minority, without my family and close friends, and being extremely far from home will be an experience I have not had for an extended period of time. I am hoping having these experiences and overcoming the difficulties associated will make me more empathetic and understanding towards someone who just moved to Canada or is attending University here. In the future, working in a pharmacy in Winnipeg I will most likely experience a patient who is having trouble adapting to a different country and possibly has a language barrier and I hope I will be able to use my experiences to council the patient effectively.

Learning about Bangladesh’s health care system is probably what I am the most excited about. It is going to be very interesting to compare and contrast the two systems and I hope I can learn something unique about Bangladesh’s that I could take back here, possibly even at the Wish Clinic.

This is the blog of the 2013 Bangladesh Service-Learning Experience (BSLE). The BSLE is a program in which University of Manitoba students travel to rural North-Western Bangladesh, to learn about the work of a local NGO, RDRS Bangladesh. The program offers our students the opportunity to learn about another culture, help support the work of the RDRS Bangladesh, and have an incredible travel experience!

During their time in Bangladesh, University of Manitoba students will be posting to this blog to share what they are seeing, experiencing and learning. Check back regularly for updates!