Saturday, June 9, 2012

Taking Education for Granted « Cooperative Catalyst

Taking Education for Granted « Cooperative Catalyst:


Taking Education for Granted

I remember the moment that I fell in love with my host father.
I had been working with the Land Reform Community for a couple of weeks at this point.  It was the project period for my globalization and development program in Thailand, and I had decided to work with a community of scavengers.  Working together, we created a two-fold project: a survey about the people living in their community and a documentary highlighting some of the individuals.
The morning of the survey, around ten of us gathered together and created a plan for the day.  We broke up, going house to house, shack to shack, asking questions about occupation, family life, and education.  And when the day was done, we came back together to discuss what the day brought.  Lead by the community organizer who worked in the community, we talked about what’d we’d learned from the survey.  There were the general reactions such as being glad to get to know those who live so close better.  Everyone was glad that they had done it, and were excited about the prospect of using it in the future.
My host father isn’t one who will speak up often in a crowd.  He is not a leader.  But, when he speaks, you know