Spring time in London

Beautiful trees blooming in the Goodenough Courtyard!

Sunning at Brighton Beach, 45 minutes outside of London

"When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure."

-Peter Marshall

Rotary Scholars Leaver's Gift

Quick Overview

The Event: 2009-2010 RIBI Ambassadorial Scholars' Leavers Gift & Summer Walk


Who: YOU, the Rotary family, your friends

What: Fundraiser for Leonard Cheshire Disability and a summer walk-a-thon


Where: Greenwich Park, southeast London, United Kingdom


When: Sunday 4 July 2010 at 10 AM
Why: Service Above Self

Answering a Need

Just walking around any city it is apparent how difficult it is for disabled people to lead normal lives: lack of elevators and wheelchair ramps, ill-maintained sidewalks and pedestrian paths, bustling crowds of people too impatient to assist. Leonard Cheshire Disability (LCD) is working to change that, to provide a way for disabled people to be more mobile and live independently.

Rotary has a long history of partnership with UK-based LCD, including past work on their Schools4All in Africa projects, which improve education for the disabled in Africa and contribute to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These are the reasons we have chosen to fundraise for LCD. The money raised will be channelled to their beneficial programmes in the UK and abroad.

The Ambassadorial Link

Rotary International Great Britain and Ireland (RIBI) has a large number of Ambassadorial Scholars studying in the UK during the 2009-2010 year. It has been an amazing, life-changing year and, true to Rotary values, we felt the best way to say “thank you” to the Rotary Foundation was to give back to the community. Moreover, an event of this nature, requiring such collaboration among UK scholars, has never been done before. This will have a great local impact!

Our Fundraising Efforts

Our fundraising goal of £5,000 is a hefty one and our deadline is only three months away. However, we hope to leverage the entire Rotary family – both in the UK and our abroad. So how can you help? Please consider donating to this great cause. Once you decide an amount, the donation process is very easy. Go to the website www.justgiving.com/summerwalk. This is a safe and secure site where you can donate using a credit card. The money goes directly to LCD!

If you are in the UK, you are invited to join us at the culminating walk-a-thon in beautiful Greenwich Park (pictured). The 5K walk on 4 July 2010 will celebrate our fundraising efforts, our health, and our year abroad.

Thank you so much for your contribution and commitment to the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar program!

End of Lent Term!

It is incredible how fast this year is going by! Lent term (aka spring term) ends in a few days. British academic calendar is quite different from the US in that all of the exams are at the end of year, even the classes you had in December. So come June I will be taking exams on EVERYTHING (will think about that later!)

In the meantime, I am sad that classes are coming to an end as I really loved my courses this term. I took a course on emerging health threats and although I am not a science/medical person at all, found the content so interesting. One of my biggest takeaways is the sheer disparity between those diseases that have the highest burden on developing countries and those diseases that get the most funding. Not surprisingly HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis get a disproportionate share of the funding partly because they are more complicated diseases but mostly because they pose the largest threat to developed countries. Kind of difficult to overlook the selfishness associated with funders' intentions.

The other elective course I took, titled Public Management of Development, covered a whole lot of issues related to the development industry (which it is). One of the lectures I found most interesting was about innovative business models whose products or services are targeted to the poor. For more information - look at some of the development blogs on the right.

Highlight of this past week was definitely having three of my best friends from Teach For America visit me. Here are just a few pictures :)

Castles Galore

One of the best parts of the United Kingdom is all of their castles! It is like a fairy tale in modern day. Here are some pictures from a Goodenough trip to Leeds Castle. A word about the castle:

"Leeds Castle passed into royal hands in 1278 and became part of the Queen of England’s dower - the settlement widowed queens received upon the death of their husbands. Over the course of 150 years it was held by six mediaeval queens: Eleanor of Castile; Margaret of France; Isabella of France, Joan of Navarre; Anne of Bohemia and Catherine de Valois. In Tudor times Henry VIII visited frequently, notably with his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, and their entire court on the way to the tournament of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, which took place in France in 1520. Henry’s son, King Edward VI, granted the castle to one of Henry’s courtiers for his services."

Not surprisingly, one of the facets of the castle that I found most interesting was that several of the Oslo Accord meetings between Palestinian and Israeli leadership were held here. Look at the picture with the blue meeting table.

Development Challenges Continued..

Hello loyal reader (the singular form was purposeful!).

Spring term, known as lent term here in England, is in full swing and keeping me busy. My studies continue to help me peel back the layers of complexities associated with the field of development. This term I am continuing with my core course on development as well as starting two new courses- one on emerging health threats and the other on public management of development. I am also auditing a class on basic education in developing countries. A nice combination to round out my education, although quite depressing at times.

One of the challenge we have been talking about in great deal is the sheer number of actors and their often diverging priorities- international agencies, local governments, external governments NGOs, media, donors, and list goes on and on.

For example- the United Nations created the Millenium Development Goals to unite agencies and countries around a set of priorities that will help eradicate poverty by 2015. It is quite clear by now that many countries will not meet a lot of these goals. Supporters of the goals suggest that regardless they create a common thread for which to rally the development community and hold everyone accountable for improvement. However, critics argue that this big picture approach dismisses historical evidence that the most successful programs are often locally initiated and not externally defined. Here is an entertaining quick video outlining the MDGs.

Critics of such wide-sweeping reforms are looking for alternative ways to provide funding for promising initiatives in developing countries. Global Giving is a marketplace bringing together donors and social entrepreneurs venturing to ameliorate social ills. This idea is challenging the old notions of how aid should be distributed and decreasing the number of steps between giver and receiver.

Even the business community is getting involved in development work. The Global Business Coalition recognizes that the corporate sector can leverage its assets - financial and human capital- to make headway on some of the leading infectious diseases that are taking millions of lives each year- HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Launched by Richard Holbrooke, the former US Ambassador to the UN, the network has over 200 participating companies from 6 continents. A recent article in the Guardian discussed the work that businesses such as Coca-Cola are having on communities around the globe.

Let us not forget the newcomers to the development industry. Hollywood stars are constantly in the news for raising money and awareness about their favorite causes. Some laude them for their humanitarianism and others criticize them for impacting policy while not being accountable to anyone but themselves. A group of musicians just re-created Michael Jackson's "We Are the World" to raise money for Haiti.

At the same time modern technology and ease of travel is enabling common folks to move from eye-witnesses to ireporters. As the line gets blurred, journalism as an industry is bleeding into development. CNN's Anderson Cooper recently rescued a young boy who was injured during looting in Port au Prince, sparking intense discussions about the objectivity of journalists in emergency settings.

It seems like development is no longer monopolized by young idealists... others are trying to elbow their way in to the industry.

Cultural awareness

My travels to Spain and Portugal were fabulous and I thought I would walk away with all of these great cultural observations, which I did, but actually this post will be a reflection of a different type of cultural observations. During my time in Israel a good friend came to visit me, and seeing Israel through her eyes made me re-appreciate a few things unique to my country. Sometimes you need someone to hold up a mirror so that you can appreciate the finer naunces of your own culture. So here are just a few of them:

• There are these collective vans in Tel Aviv that are the alternative to buses. The process of getting on a sherut is quite unique- you literally flag the driver down while on his route, he stops mid-traffic and picks you up while others honk incessantly or drives right past you if his van is full (this is not the interesting part, although could easily confuse a visitor!) The thing that amazed my friend is that you don't actually pay when you board the van. Once you sit down you pass up your money via the other passengers. There will literally be several hand offs to get the money up to the driver and then an equal amount to get your change back to you. And this happens each time a new person gets on the sherut!
• There seems to be a general shortage of respect for the elderly in many western countries and Israel is no exception. However, without fail, whenever an older person gets on the sherut, the person sitting closest to the front will get up and move to the back so that s/he doesn't have as far to go. I have seen children, young moms, punk kids on cell phones, and adults all do this for their elderly. Kind of warms your heart knowing some things are still sacred.
• Israel shuts down on Saturdays, the Sabbath. No shops or museums are open and most restaurants are closed as well. So there are much fewer things to do on your Saturday. However this has probably helped foster an adventurous culture where families often go on day trips and picnics. My first Saturday in Israel my family packed up the entire refrigerator and we were off on our adventure. We ended up having a lovely picnic in this national forest between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I can't remember the last time I did something like that in the States and really appreciated the quality time that we had together; after all isn't that what the Sabbath is all about.

I could go on and on but I will keep this short and sweet. I am so used to these aspects of Israeli life that I don't even think twice about their peculiarities to oustiders. David Brook wrote a compelling piece from a more objective perspective about the finer elements of Israel! Feel free to add your favorite cultural oddity (for whichever culture) in the comments section.

P.S. Just for fun I am including a few pictures from Portugal and Spain: