Today we interviewed five girls at Zanzibar Commercial Secondary School. I realized that even though we are asking them prepared questions and having some great conversations with some of the girls, I still feel very unprepared and disconnected. Other than understanding what S4Si does, what experience or qualifications do we, as American university students without a complete understanding of the culture, language, and way of life, have to be making such life-changing decisions?
How do we gracefully waltz in and out every summer while still conducting ourselves with humility, consistent outreach and enforcement of our scholarship?
I think that the key is to include locals that care about what we do because they are the ones that will really be able to assess the situation. I hope that the mentors that we hire for the students will solve a lot of the issues that I am struggling with. As much time as we put in to S4Si at UNC, the students that go each summer are practically going in to the selection process blind. If we are going to continue to send students every summer, which I think is an important and unique characteristic of our organization, we need to have in-country contacts that we can consistently communicate with and set selection processes that will help mitigate the learning curve that American university students experience in Zanzibar. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be able to explore the island and learn things for ourselves, but when it comes to S4Si, we need to have a better guiding structure already in place.
Word of the day:
Leo – today
Keshu - tomorrow
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