University of Toronto Scarborough
from Leslie Chan on Vimeo.
“One thing that I specifically came to see while in Tanzania, is that poverty is not about a
lack of material things or modern goods.
Many of the people that I met and visited with may be considered poor by certain income standards,
but did not live what I saw as a life of poverty or despair”
“I feel like my time on placement has given me a
good footing to enter into the working world,
as I can attest to already having spent time in the field”
Leslie Campbell will never forget the children he met in a refugee camp in Burma.
The fifth-year student in International Development Studies co-op at U of T Scarborough spent a year in Asia as part of a work placement that enabled him to see and understand the challenges of development firsthand.
Campbell and other volunteers led Ultimate Frisbee workshops in a displaced persons camp for children who had little exposure to sport or play. “Most of the children grew up inside the refugee camp. They’re not considered citizens of Burma and don’t have citizenship anywhere, so they can’t leave the camp.”
He was struck by their positive attitude and enthusiasm. “The kids were so receptive to learning a new sport and had a really good time,” says Campbell, 21. “The good thing about teaching ultimate frisbee is that very little equipment is needed, and the kids picked up the game quickly.”
Campbell’s 10-hour weekend trips into the camps were just one part of his placement in northern Thailand, where he worked on a farm as part of a sustainable agriculture project. Young people were sent out of Burma to the farm for training in techniques to reclaim land that had been severely degraded. These “train-the-trainer” sessions in Thailand were designed to teach the youth farming skills they could bring back into Burma (Myanmar) and pass on to others.
Many Burmese youth who came to the farm had faced extremely difficult circumstances. “One student had grown up in the rainforest and her family had to keep moving from place to place to escape military persecution, and so she never really had a home,” says the Markham native. “We met many people from really unfortunate backgrounds, and yet they were the most vibrant, outgoing and enthusiastic students I’ve ever worked with. It definitely puts your own life in perspective.”
On the farm, Campbell’s team worked to plant a rice paddy, using sickles to chop up the rice and then bundling the strands, all the while teaching the visiting teens the same techniques. “Everything was done by hand, and after the rice was dried, we used a cow to walk over a tarpaulin and crush the rice to separate the seeds from the husks, and we couldn’t overlook a single grain. The experience changed my whole view of food production, and I’ll never look at a plate of rice the same way.”
Campbell is just one of some 300 students who have come through the IDS co-op program over the years. Since its inception 25 years ago, the program has continued to produce leaders in the development field, both domestically and abroad.
A passion for social justice and human rights and a commitment to fight poverty and global inequality are often motives that lead students to enrol in IDS. In fact, many of them have already traveled to developing countries before they enrol. The students are energetic young people eager to make a difference in the world, and keen to dedicate their studies to be able to do just that.
Foundations for success
In 1984, UTSC launched the IDS co-op program as an intensive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate offering – the first of its kind in Canada. Learning by doing has always been at the heart of the program. From the start, four UTSC professors -- Rorke Bryan, Albert Berry, Richard Sandbrook and Pedro Leon — saw the need to bring students directly into local communities in Latin America, Asia and Africa for hands-on experience. The founders also foresaw the importance of blending environmental science, economics, political science and languages in a rigorous academic way, and so they designed a multi-disciplinary curriculum, the only one to feature an extended co-op placement built in. Partner organizations for placements include World University Services of Canada (WUSC) and Canadian Feed the Children, to name a few.
“There was no precedent for IDS as we envisioned it,” says Berry, an economics professor who still teaches in the program. IDS program leaders have always developed original curriculum, and then re-evaluated and refined it based on world events and student input. The five-year co-op stream includes an eight- to 12-month placement with a reputable Canadian humanitarian agency in a developing country, along with a research thesis requirement, another unique feature. The program is one of the toughest to get into at UTSC, with extremely high standards. From about 150 applicants each year, only some 25 are accepted. Most students in the program go on to work in international development and/or pursue related graduate degrees.
“The students in the program are of very high quality,” says Sharmaine Nelles of Ottawa, a long-time employer of UTSC co-op students and an executive at WUSC. “We have a very high satisfaction level here and from our partner organizations in the field. The students are mature and dedicated with a good grasp of the values and principles that support the development work we do around the world.”
Students and alumni demonstrate a commitment to eradicating poverty and injustice. When Aly-Khan Rajani (BA 2002) of Edmonton was considering universities, he searched for a program in which he could best learn how to help people in developing countries. He felt that IDS co-op was a perfect fit. “This was it,” he says. “I knew that IDS was what I wanted – not a diplomatic or formal approach to international relations – but a way of helping people directly.”
Rajani spent his student work term in Zambia, and he says the experience galvanized him. Sponsored by CARE International, Rajani organized an international conference for developing countries to share information on urbanization issues such as urban slums, water and sanitation in cities, and urban health. “The placement was a phenomenal opportunity to make an impact locally and internationally,” he says.
Now an alumnus, Rajani is a senior policy advisor with CIDA. He guides the Canadian government in allocating humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. Previously, he worked with CARE to manage communications and emergency response systems in Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami, in Kashmir after the 2005 earthquake, and in 2007 during the conflict in Iraq.
Professor Leslie Chan, IDS supervisor, says that “The program prepares graduates to become global citizens, and many have gone on to play key roles in international development.” He notes that Chris Eaton (BA 1989), keynote speaker at the 25th anniversary, graduated from the first class and is now executive director of WUSC Canada. Another alumnus, Kevin McCort, is the president and CEO of CARE Canada.
The program has enjoyed long relationships with various organizations, NGOs, Canadian government agencies, and research centres. They include: World Vision, Oxfam-Quebec, Presbyterian World Service and Development (PWS&D) and the India-based Centre for Internet and Society, which does policy work related to open access. Placement tasks can include needs assessments, project implementation, community development, report writing, and training delivery. The safety of the regions is carefully monitored, and high-risk conflict zones are avoided.
Alumna Kate Jongbloed (BA Hons. 2008) was one of several students who did placements in regions ravaged by HIV/AIDS. She went to Ethiopia with Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief and the Canada-Africa Partnership on AIDS. Part of her role was to help manage a project to give work-skills training to young people who had lost parents to AIDS and were now responsible for younger siblings.
“My placement definitely directed my career and interests,” says Jongbloed. She plans to pursue a Master’s degree in public health, focusing on how non-traditional health projects – such as micro-economic projects to reduce HIV risk for young people -- can impact health outcomes. Meanwhile, as web coordinator for Fife House Foundation in Toronto, Jongbloed is pursuing another related passion, technology for health. Fife House is the largest provider of supportive housing services to people living with HIV/AIDS in Canada. Jongbloed is developing a national housing portal as a resource for people with the disease, as well as for service providers and researchers.
Alumna Dr. Leslie Casely-Hayford (BA 1991) has investigated and addressed the ethical dimensions of development from the days of her student placement in Cameroon up to her work today. She examines issues such as the importance of building local capacity, information exchange rather than imposition, and the need to factor cultural impacts into the assessments of costs versus benefits. Casely-Hayford investigated these issues through her student placement in a remote rural area of northern Cameroon, working on a water project that involved developing community-owned water and sanitation projects in local areas.
Casely-Hayford has now lived overseas for 20 years. Her organization, Associates for Change (AFC), provides research services to international organizations and government agencies. She is especially proud of AFC’s breakthrough in influencing alternative-education policy and programming for rural Ghanaians, noting that more than 80,000 children have benefited from these programs that help young people gain access to basic education.
She says the approach to international development has changed, with a “recognition that economics and econometric analysis” are not the only ways to measure improvements in people’s lives. Berry echoes that view, noting “an ongoing, big shift in the way that we perceive the developing world, and our students are active critics of development paradigms centred too simplistically on economic growth and installing democracy.”
As IDS enters its next 25 years, Berry adds, we are just starting to think about the true tradeoffs of development and the need to do better in the area of women’s rights and gender justice.
There is much work that still needs to be done in international development, according to all those associated with the program. Yet they know that the students they admit will bring a collective knowledge and experience will help take Canada and the world into new dimensions of international service.
By: Lisa Boyes
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