Oral History Project

INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH BLOOM, SOPHOMORE AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.

This is “Beth!”

For interview please click [Here].

Excerpts from interview

How did you first feel, when you first got there, when you first met the people, when you first realized what you were doing?

  • “I remember being shocked as to how much they let me do, as an 18 year old freshman in college, who knew nothing about medicine or gynecology and they were letting us take the heart beats measurements and doing things that Id never be allowed to do in the US, so that was definitely surprising.”
  • “ I was also surprised as to how young all the women were, who were at the maternity clinic and how young the pregnant women were. There was one girl there that was 12 years old, that was definitely very shocking.”

There is a big controversy around the idea of voluntarism, what do you think about that?

  • “I think that’s definitely part of why I wanted to go to this places, I wanted to travel to Ecuador I wanted to travel to Nicaragua. It sounded like fun. I mean I wanted to go to help people, but I knew that with my level of education, with my level of experience I couldn’t do a whole lot.”
  • “Its definitely a valid concern that volunteers are going just to travel. Specially teenagers and college students because they don’t have the skills to do so (service). But I don’t think that necessarily means they shouldn’t go, because I think there is a lot to be learned from these trips, even if it’s just an outsider watching and learning from the communities”

How did you manage tourism and volunteering at the same time?

  • “I worked during the weeks and took trips during the weekends.”

How did you benefit from the trip in anyway?

  • “I learned a lot, just how to go about service work in other countries and is much more important to spend the time getting to know the people and getting to know how the systems your working on are set up and how to work with the infrastructure that’s already there. That you really can’t do much until you understand who you’re working with and why you’re working with them, what the context is. You can’t just come in with a plan of what to do, because there are so many other factors you have to consider…to see what the actual needs on the ground are.”

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