Pre-departure Learning

Although my placement doesn't begin until May 7th when I step foot in Ghana, there is a significant amount of learning and preparations that need to take place beforehand to ensure we are the most effective and make the most of the learning experience when overseas.
The major preparations come from:

1. Personal Development Plan
2. Past Junior Fellow (JF) coffee shop discussions
3. Foundation Learning
4. 1-week pre-departure training prior to leaving

The personal development plan is to help us identify what our strengths and weaknesses are and see how they line up with what knowledge, skills and attitudes we will need overseas in our placements. From there, we just have to take advantage of the time we have to try and improve and fill in the gaps of our knowledge.

The coffee shop discussions have been the most helpful so far. The two JFs from the Guelph chapter, Janna and Kyla, and myself and Madavine, the other 2008 JF from Guelph who is going to Zambia, meet every wendesday in the Daily Grind and they help us through our learning and preparation. They answer all our questions and tell us stories of what to expect, its lots of fun.

Foundation learning is a series of assignments for all of us JFs to do. There are different levels of learning, and an example of some things I have completed already: interviewing a past JF and seeing how their expectations lined up with their realities overseas, reading the book "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, reading about rural livelihoods and agriculture in Africa, to name a few. We discuss our findings on myewb posts with the other JFs and our JF support Staff, Cat Dorval.

Then there is a whirlwind of a week where we learn as much as we can before we jump on a plane and disperse throughout Africa!