News

Report from the 2009 Global Engagement Summer Institute:
Academics with Action

by Bethany Croasmun and Nicole Patel, GESI

9/20/2009

The Buffett Center and the Center for Global Engagement (CGE) proudly welcome home the 44 participants of this year’s Global Engagement Summer Institute (GESI).

GESI is a one-of-a-kind Northwestern summer study abroad program that prepares undergraduate students with the knowledge, tools and experiences to confront shared global problems. It is among the few programs that provides meaningful hands-on experience alongside academic training and credit.

Since inception in 2006, GESI has doubled its enrollment and tripled the number of country site offerings. This year, in addition to Northwestern students, the GESI class represented eighteen other prestigious institutions including Brown, Duke, University of St. Andrews and Wellesley College and majors ranging from mechanical engineering to peace studies.

GESI participants were placed in teams of three to five students at ten NGOs in India, Uganda and Argentina to implement community development projects.

Some of the teams mobilized migrant communities in Argentina to build a greenhouse out of wasted plastic bottles, documented the relationship between the environment and tribal communities in India, and trained a newly formed Ugandan savings and credit cooperative to begin micro-lending activities. In doing so, GESI program participants challenged and changed the way they interpret and engage the realities of global inequality.

GESI participants overwhelmingly identify hands-on development experience, pre-departure training, and team-based site placements as their reasons for choosing this program over traditional summer opportunities.

Abigail Hannifan, a Vanderbilt junior majoring in Medicine, Health and Society, chose GESI “because it paired academics with action.” For GESI students, putting their learning into action means that their projects emerge from the direct involvement of the community: “We were trained on how to utilize our individual assets, along with the assets of our NGO and community, to implement well-designed project ideas. There were no pre-determined project plans. Our project was a product of interviews and asset assessments with local community members.”

Academic Training
This year’s program commenced with a rigorous 10-day pre-departure training at Northwestern featuring presentations by country experts, panels of development specialists, and two 30-hour courses taught by two Northwestern professors: Paul Arntson’s Theory and Practice of Community Consulting and Jody Kretzmann’s Introduction to Community Development in an International Context. In the courses, students explored team and inter- and intra-group dynamics, decision-making, and leadership in multicultural environments. They also learned about Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), a large and growing movement, founded at Northwestern by Kretzmann, that considers local assets to be the primary building blocks of sustainable community development.

International Immersion
Rachel Suffrin, a Northwestern psychology major explains, “This program was special because it really brought new meaning to hands-on learning. The background at the pre-departure training on development was great, and then a week later you were on site attempting to implement what you had learned and in the process learning far more than you could have from reading reports.”

In Uganda, Hannifan’s group created opportunities for HIV/AIDS affected communities to improve the nutritional value of their diets and to augment their income through mushroom farming. The project will benefit six families and be replicated by many more. Hannifan explains the advantage of GESI’s team model in her experience: “My teammates were very committed to and focused on our project. The engineering students’ knowledge was especially useful in the construction of our mushroom sheds.” In addition, pre-health students drew on knowledge from past experiences to create a nutritional seminar that increased health and diet awareness in the community.

GESI’s in-country partner, the Foundation for Sustainable Development, monitors the impact student projects have on their host NGOs and communities. Their findings have been affirming: NGOs report that GESI students are responsible, innovative and well-prepared for community development work.

Returning Home
A critical and lasting result of the program is that alumni engage their world differently after their experience. Immediately following the program, students returned to Chicago for a wrap-up summit where they shared and reflected on their experiences, networked with international development professionals, and learned about opportunities that will enable them to stay engaged in global development issues.

Simon Han, a Northwestern communication studies and creative writing major, explains, “I have grown a lot as a person and I think it will change the way I am around my parents, my friends, and even strangers. Professionally, this serves as valuable work experience. Academically, I can apply the principles I’ve learned in other teamwork situations and use the perspective I’ve gained when approaching new development situations."