I did not know entirely what to expect when I signed up to take this course, but I am very glad that I did. I am someone who learns by doing and am a big believer in experiential learning. Although I cannot participate in the service project next month in Nicaragua, I am very interested in participating next year. I believe this class has prepared me for not just an experiential learning project in Nicaragua, but in anywhere in Latin America. I learned a great deal about all of the dynamics that lie behind service trips such as these and have a solid grasp on what to expect and how to act.
I enjoyed investigating difference aspects of development projects through this course and now know what constitutes a successful implementation of developmental work in emerging nations. I have learned that there are many layers to service organizations, their projects, and the nations that they operate in. Politics largely influences the scale and scope of the work that international service organizations can do. Governments want their countries to experience positive growth, but not always by the hand of a foreigner. The service agents need to understand the communities that they are entering in order to provide as much benefit as possible.
The practice of understanding a native community leads me into the next main topic that I learned in this course. One of the main challenges service organizations and development projects face is the risk of causing more harm than good. Making no impact on the community is impossible, so taking measures to cause as little disturbance as possible in the community is very important. The oral history project that we completed in this class and the other ethnographic work I have done this term has made me highly aware of this.
I also enjoyed learning more about specific topics that I am interested in this course through the About Nicaragua and research assignments. As an economics major, learning about the access to microfinance, microcredit, and loan opportunities in rural communities proved fascinating. I was able to see the theoretical concepts that I learn in my major courses applied in real life. I saw that even though Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, it is not necessarily because they do not work hard. Many of the Nicaraguan case studies that I learned about demonstrated them as working incredible hard to improve their socioeconomic status.
Mainly though, this course opened my eyes to the possibility of participating in a big time service project in a developing nation. Since I do not have much experience in health related fields, I am now very interested in going on the trip next year on the CD team. I wish I were going this year so I could ask the Nicaraguans all of the questions that I have for them. I also wish for the chance to improve my Spanish and I think a two-week project such as this would be the perfect opportunity. Even as I write this though, I see that my motives for going on the trip are not entirely altruistic. I do not know if that is bad thing, but it is certainly something to note. Since coming to Dartmouth, I have greatly increased the amount of volunteer work that I do and I would love to increase it further on an international scale.