I've been a lazy blogger. A direct result of being rather busy in real life. I just returned from my Global Xchange training weekend in Birmingham. It feels like I was there for more like a week than a weekend! The weekend answered alot of questions and there was alot of group disscussion around some of the themes of the exchange, such as diversity, poverty and inequality. It felt good to excercise the old brain muscles again and I'm gald that the programme has a structure in place for education and learning about other cultures and global issues that will be of use for making sense of and articulating the experiences we will have and skills we will gain (this framework is known as the Global Citizenship Framework and was drawn up with Oxfam). I think this will probably be one of the most challenging things I'll ever do, but I hope it will be worth it. Anyway, most interestingly I found out which exchange I am on...
Stanstead - Kazakhstan!
I will be volunteering and living in Harlow and Bishops Stortford in the UK and in around the city of Shymkent in Southern Kazakhstan. I am very excited. Kazakhstan was one of my choices. It is a place I would have been unlikely to go normally and despite being the 9th largest country in the world people here (including me) know very little about it. Also, putting my geeky politics hat on, I'm very interested in it's politics as a post soviet state having studied those of Eastern Europe at university. I also met four of the nine UK volunteers who will be on my exchange, who all seem like lovely people, and am hoping to get in touch with the rest and maybe some of the volunteers from Kazakhstan.
p.s. Can't remeber if I've added this before or not but if anyone is interested in Global Xchange
check out the website
http://www.vso.org.uk/globalxchange/
or leave any questions as a comment
I will be volunteering and living in Harlow and Bishops Stortford in the UK and in around the city of Shymkent in Southern Kazakhstan. I am very excited. Kazakhstan was one of my choices. It is a place I would have been unlikely to go normally and despite being the 9th largest country in the world people here (including me) know very little about it. Also, putting my geeky politics hat on, I'm very interested in it's politics as a post soviet state having studied those of Eastern Europe at university. I also met four of the nine UK volunteers who will be on my exchange, who all seem like lovely people, and am hoping to get in touch with the rest and maybe some of the volunteers from Kazakhstan.
p.s. Can't remeber if I've added this before or not but if anyone is interested in Global Xchange
check out the website
http://www.vso.org.uk/globalxchange/
or leave any questions as a comment
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