Check out the orphanage: http://www.kidsworldwide.org/ugandastpaul.htm
[mi] online Q&A -
Languages:
English, French, Arabic (and learned and spoke Wolof when
living in West Africa, however, remember little of it at this time)
Qualifications, general – (no long CVs please) write what is your general educational background or experience:
I am a Licensed Psychologist in Washington State, USA,
have a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, and a masters degree in
theological studies. I have training and have done research with
adults and children and persons with developmental disabilities, in the
assessment and treatment of violence, and am particularly interested in
the use of poetry, story, and ritual in healing, wholeness and
spiritual transformation, especially with marginalized or disadvantaged
persons.
Do you have any specific skills, training or experience relevant to the project you want to participate in?
Several years ago I lived with a small community of
volunteers in a disadvantaged area right outside Dakar, Senegal in
West Africa. There, I volunteered for 14 months with poor children
and families. In my later months in the community, I also served as
the house leader. Our daily activities and responsibilities were
very similar to those of the East Africa sites - supplementing the
children's education with tutoring, after school lessons, creating
and facilitating play, art, and other activities that served to
guide the children's learning of healthy personal and relational
behaviors. We also made daily visits to the children’s families in
the neighborhood, and weekly visits to local hospitals to do
activities with the children who had long stays. Periodically, we
took longer trips to local villages to visit the extended families
of our neighbors. A few years after volunteering at the Dakar site,
I completed a time of service for its mother house in France and
offered consultation and help to the development of its US affiliate.
I have also periodically volunteered with youth in the Churches I have
attended, teaching Sunday School and leading youth activities, offering
guidance to pre-teens and teens. Most recently, I completed a research
project on the use of poetry with children with severe mental health
and behavioral issues.
Why do you want to go to the project? What are your personal goals in volunteering with us?
At this time, I feel the need to take a step away from my
work and life in the U.S. to reconnect with the world and neighbors and
to reevaluate and relearn ways in which I can serve the world. As part
of that step, I feel called to spend time again in service to the
children and people of Africa. For me, the continent holds unique
wisdom and cultural beauty particularly important to our world, and I
believe that our world will only benefit by nourishing its children and
supporting the future of Africa. I believe that we are all
interdependent - the earth, creatures and people of the world, and that
mutual relational exchange (such as my goal at any of the
Uganda/Tanzania sites) is at the heart of both our personal spiritual
transformation as well as world change. I feel drawn to the sites in
East Africa because I have yet to experience that area of Africa and
would like to learn more about its people, and feel particularly drawn
to offer help in Uganda because of the AIDS/HIV crisis there.
What experiences have you had with other cultures?
I volunteered with persons with developmental disabilities for one year in France, volunteered for 14 months in Senegal where the predominant religion is Islam, but where we also encountered various indigenous religious beliefs and practices, have
visited family and traveled in Egypt (I am of Coptic Egyptian-Christian
background), and have traveled to Central America, Canada, Europe. I
have training in and have assisted teaching on issues of diversity, and
I work with persons of various ethnicities, socio-economic levels,
sexual identities, and who speak various primary languages. I have
lived in different cultural areas in the United States, and am
presently in a committed interfaith relationship.
How would you approach disagreements with the Project Director or a staff member regarding management of the program?
I will spend the beginning time period at any site learning about the ways in which the project leaders envision that I can
contribute to the mission. I think I will spend much of that time
watching and listening and asking questions in order to learn about the
cultural and organizational specifics, and time creating relationships
with the staff, other volunteers and children and families served, and
learning their ways of living and working, rather than coming with
fixed ideas on how I might live or work with the organization. I
recognize that if I am invited to volunteer, I am asked to come with
knowledge and skills and ready to share in order to benefit the goals
of the organization. In the event that I do disagree with the Director
or staff on an issue, likely I will simply ask more questions about why
this is, and spend time thinking about it, and then discussing
privately with that person my thoughts at an appropriate time and
place. I do believe that disagreements are bound to happen and that this kind of dialogue can lead to learning and exchange for everyone. In the end though, I respect the fact that I have been invited to participate and that part of my experience might be that the Director and staff will make different decisions than I would.
[Ive]
Qualifications, general – (no long CVs please) write what is your general educational background or experience.
As a college student, I spent my summers working at a sleep-away camp for impoverished and traumatized children. I received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1998. In my training, I worked with children, families, college students, and adults who needed counseling or psychological testing, and with children and adults with severe mental illnesses who were placed in a psychiatric hospital. For the last ten years I have worked doing psychological evaluations for children who have broken the law to explain their problems to judges so that better decisions can be made about how to handle their case. For about three years, I have also taught children to trust in their goodness and the goodness of other people in a Buddhist Sunday School program that I co-directed and taught in.
Do you have any specific skills, training or experience relevant to the project you want to participate in?
I am hoping that my years of experience working with children will help me to quickly connect with and be a positive influence on the children at KAASO. I have skills in talking with children about very difficult life events and helping them to gain better perspective on what has happened so that they can move forward. I have skills in helping children to develop trust in themselves and others through games and activities and talking. I also have skills in teaching children Life Skills and in helping parents to develop good parenting skills, if those skills may be of use to children, parents, or staff at the project.
Why do you want to go to the project? What are your personal goals in volunteering with us?
I have too many motivations to explain them all – but the main ones are that I want to develop relationships with people who have a very different experience of life than I do so that I can grow from their lives, while at the same time offering my time and skills so that they may grow from the things that I have done with my life. I want to help – and I want to be touched by the people I help. I have a unique story and so do they – I want the chance to share these with one another. I am traveling with the hope to have life-changing experiences – and there is no greater chance for changing lives than in forming relationships.
What experiences have you had with other cultures?
I grew up in New York City in the United States, a city with a great deal of cultural diversity, so I have always had contact with different cultures from a very early age. I studied in Israel for 6 months when I was in college, which gave me a chance to sink into a different culture with a different worldview and different worries and concerns than what I grew up with. I have lived in three very culturally different regions in the United States (New York; Alabama; and Seattle). I have traveled in Poland, Egypt, and Peru, including home-stays in villages, which taught me great lessons on what can be gained from spending a little time with people who have different lives than my own. I was a member of a Tibetan Buddhist community for about ten years, which taught me a great deal about Tibetan culture. As a psychologist, I am trained in issues of cultural sensitivity. And throughout my life, I have had an innate curiosity about how different cultures influence people – and how much we tend to take our own cultural experiences as “truth” until we realize that there are others with very different “truths.”
How would you approach disagreements with the Project Director or a staff member regarding management of the program?
I tend to have a style of appreciating the limits of my own understanding of a situation. If I had a strong disagreement with something that was happening I would first want to better understand the perspective of the others. I would ask questions and take time to observe what was really happening – trying to see the situation through their eyes without assuming that my eyes are seeing it more clearly. If after doing this, if I felt strongly that something needed to be done differently, I would talk with the people involved. I think that I have very good communication skills and negotiation skills and I feel confident that I would be able to express my views in a respectful manner and be able to find common ground with which to step forward.
Is there anything else you can tell us to help us get to know you better? Comment on your travelling schedule here if you know your plans.
It may help to know that this volunteer works is part of a bigger plan to travel and volunteer around the world for about a year. After working at my job doing psychological evaluations for juvenile courts for ten years, I feel called to do something newly creative with my life. I have been studying and practicing Buddhist meditation for about ten years and I am very interested in dialogue between different religions and traditions as our world continues on the path of globalization. These fifteen months offer me a chance to step out of my comfort zone of my life in the United States, get to know my world better and with fresh eyes, and have the space needed to examine my own unfolding so that when I return to the United States I can take the right next steps in offering myself to the world.
How did you find out about us?
In planning the year of traveling and volunteering that I described above, we researched volunteer organizations through a number of books, which is where we found Kids Worldwide
