After our academic journals were handed in and our final exams were written, we only had on elast thing to do: our final research presentations (worth our entire course (basically)). At the beginning of our trip (literally our first week in Nairobi), we decided on the themes for our research across East Africa that were connected to the millennium development goals. (we also decided on our groups before we knew anything about each other – by the end of the 2 months, I knew that I was one of the lucky ones that ended up having an incredible group dynamic and team mates for this huge project).
My group, which consisted of: Bluth, Justine, Natalie (from Queens), Maya, Andrew, Shelby (from UBC) and Laura decided to focus on environmental sustainability in food production across east Africa, and evaluate the drivers that were pushing for change in food production techniques and whether these changes were more or less sustainable than the old technique…We conducted opportunistic interviews everytime we visited a project or site and held regular group meetings to discuss our findings, write up progress reports and draw some conclusions.
On the 2nd last day of the program we were given the entire day to completely the project (aka a half-hour presentation) and integrate and analyze ALL of our data. My group eventually concluded that “sustainability” is a difficult thing to define. There are many levels that define something as sustainable. Things can be sustainable at a local level, but not necessarily on a global scale. Through research, we saw first hand, the effects that global drivers of change have on the sustainability of practices here in East Africa. Economic drivers and environmental drivers were the top two and so, as a group, we are ultimately more away of our global impact and the interconnectedness of global systems.
I’d say this is a pretty important lesson to learn, and that in itself, makes this trip a very successful and important addition to my education. I'm very proud of our research, presentation and findings so if anyone would like to view the presentation you can find it here!
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