Your non-profit organization is sending you to Kenya.
You've designed an innovate system for waste-water treatment and management that can be built with inexpensive materials and using low-tech labour practices. You've also done your reading about particular Maasi agriculturalists with whom you will work, learned a bit of the local languages, and you're financed for a one-year assignment to work within this community.
Ever operated a back hoe?
You've landed in Indonesia.
You're conducting an ex-post facto assessment of a UNDP programme on Halmahera. You've compiled your list of contacts and addresses of the offices and individuals you need to interview and booked your tickets from Jarakrta to the North Maluccan transit hub of Ternate. You know from reading online that Halmahera is frequented by bird watchers, and the region was recently opened for more general forms of adventure tourists. describing the area.
Surely you can arrange a boat upon your arrival to transport you to your field site?
You're researching extractive industries projects in China.
Getting off the plane in Shanghai, you're struck by the enormity of the city: every building reaches endlessly upward. You've snagged a sweet apartment using a reputable online broker and you've got your address print out in Chinese characters with accompanying pin yin transliterations (just in case). You go head outside and start to show your address to cab drivers, prepared for a tough price negotiations. Rather than being your request being greeted with gusto, each person who reads your sign start uttering something to themselves and then passing you down the line of drivers.
Where do you go from here?
Your non-profit organization is sending you to Kenya.
You've designed an innovate system for waste-water treatment and management that can be built with inexpensive materials and using low-tech labour practices. You've also done your reading about particular Maasi agriculturalists with whom you will work, learned a bit of the local languages, and you're financed for a one-year assignment to work within this community.
Ever operated a back hoe?
You've landed in Indonesia.
You're conducting an ex-post facto assessment of a UNDP program on Halmahera. You've compiled your list of contacts and addresses of the offices and individuals you need to interview and booked your tickets from Jarakrta to the North Maluccan transit hub of Ternate. You know from reading online that Halmahera is frequented by bird watchers, and the region was recently opened for more general forms of adventure tourists. describing the area.
Surely you can arrange a boat upon your arrival to get to your field site?
You're researching extractive industries projects in China.
Getting off the plane in Shanghai, you're struck by the enormity of the city: every building reaches endlessly upward. You've snagged a sweet apartment using a reputable online broker and you've got your address print out in Chinese characters with accompanying pin yin transliterations (just in case). You go head outside and start to show your address to cab drivers, prepared for a tough price negotiations. Rather than being your request being greeted with gusto, each person who reads your sign start uttering something to themselves and then passing you down the line of drivers.
Where do you go from here?
There is more complexity in the world than any one person can possibly imagine. You want to put your knowledge and education to good use in volunteer development work or field research. To get to that moment, there are a thousand practical problems that you may not have prepared for, from basic language issues, to carrying out the critical daily tasks of life on a farm in the developing world, to the technical needs of staying in touch and carrying out research in the farthest-flung locales.
In three weeks at the world's premier development fieldwork bootcamp, you will undergo a transformative experience that will leave you mentally and technically prepared for the toughest situations that your fieldwork will hand you.
