Learning in Action
Photo by George Osodi
Six lessons of the Drew International Seminar in Cameroon —and why a health clinic gave Drew students a goat.
You won’t find Cameroon on a list of the most popular study-abroad destinations, but that was a selling point for the 19 Drew students who traveled there with the 2008 Drew International Seminar (DIS).
The semester before they left was a blur.
By day, in their pre-departure course, they studied grassroots development—the growing practice of floating seemingly infinitesimal amounts of aid money directly to individuals—and microfinance, a parallel “development from below” philosophy that won Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
By night, they held fundraisers, collecting slightly more than $5,000—about the average annual income of five Cameroonians—to devote to development projects in the villages they would visit.
What would happen once they reached Cameroon was transformational. Here are six ways this DIS made an impact:
1. Traveling through rural Cameroon, Drew students quickly became aware of the magnitude of the country’s poverty. “Seeing how different the standard of living is and how people make do with next to nothing is a major reason for the trip,” explains Andrea Talentino, associate professor of political science and one of the faculty members who developed the DIS.
Photo by George Osodi
2. Students came to understand the local economy in a cluster of villages, interviewing cassava farmers, health care workers, municipal officials and others. “We met with villagers to help us understand what they needed most,” says Michael Degen C’08. “We were actively engaged, knowing that we were working on something that would help them.” Lauren Spiechowski C’10 felt the pre-departure course prepared them well. “When we met with the microcredit women’s group,” she says, “we knew exactly what questions to ask.” Some of the students dug even further in anticipation of writing their development proposals, and priced supplies, such as textbooks, nails, corrugated metal roofing and more.
3. When they returned to campus, they tackled an assignment unlike any term paper or exam they’d ever had before. Surrounded by Cameroon’s staggering needs, they—like every development group from the World Bank on down—had to draw on their growing expertise to write group proposals for projects that would have a palpable impact on the community and fit within their budget. This challenge alone lifted the DIS from a mere academic exercise to a real-life development project—and a profound humanitarian gesture, since the projects would affect people the students met face-to-face, as guests in their homes and on their soccer fields.
4. They tested their proposals against what they had learned in their pre-departure course, Development in Africa (one week, for instance, had been devoted to the topic, “Examples of Failure”), and subjected them to the scrutiny of their fellow classmates and professors. After much debate, they voted via secret ballot to select three proposals that would receive funding, explains Kathleen Madden, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor who conceived the Cameroon DIS . Madden’s idea for the DIS grew from her long-standing ties to the country, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and now as head of her own nonprofit grassroots development group that funds projects in the area.
Photo by George Osodi
5. Funding from Drew students was soon wired to Cameroon, giving them the satisfaction of knowing that tangible improvements were on their way for the villagers. In six months’ time, the Ogomoko Government Primary School had already installed “concrete floors, decreasing the amount of dust that the children breathe, and a cement veranda to prevent the foundation of the school from crumbling,” says a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Kembong, Cameroon, who is monitoring progress for Drew on this and other projects still in development. Nearby, the Kembong Health Center used its funding to buy delivery kits and suction pumps. “The center is now one of the best-equipped to deliver babies next to the District Hospital in a nearby village,” she says. The health center’s new director was so appreciative that he has given Drew students—and the local nongovernmental organization with which they worked—a goat.
6. If students gleaned one thing from the Cameroon DIS, it may be “how really small efforts can have compounding effects,” says Talentino. “You want to fix it all, but it’s giant, and all you can do is chip away at the problems. Projects like these can have effects on generations of kids, sometimes even giving them a chance to go on to a university.”
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Ashley Walker
Major | Psychology
"I would like to go to graduate school and ultimately become a clinical psychologist. I’m into the clinical aspects, such as therapy and I also really like working with children so hopefully I’ll work in that area."