Bringing home the global experience

Development Studies graduate shares her internship experience working in Peru through the Coady International Institute’s Youth in Partnership Program

By Kathy Gillis
March/April 2012

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Lydia King, of Ottawa, Ontario, has just returned from a six-month internship in Peru. With an International Development Studies and Spanish double major from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Lydia applied to the Coady International Institute’s Youth-in-Partnership program, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. The 24-year-old was chosen along with 19 other recent Canadian graduates to work with Coady Institute partner organizations overseas.

“After graduating, I was looking for more experience working in the field,” she said. “I wanted to learn more about development, how it works in practice, and further develop some skills that were applicable.”

Lydia was placed with the Centre for Research, Education and Development in Lima, an NGO working on sustainable rural development in the region. Her first assignment was to the village of Antioquia, 75 kilometres from Lima, assisting with a project to try to create employment in the community by bettering the area’s tourism industry. The villagers hope to stem the exodus of youth into urban life in Lima.

Working with Antioquia’s youth association, Lydia was helping them through a series of workshops to find the tools to better their food, hospitality and other services for tourism.

Lydia’s next assignment was in Arequipa with the community of Castilla, more than 1,000 kilometres from Lima. She accompanied a women’s empowerment project covering education, health care, sexual health, and violence against women. “My part in that project was to support the development of the alpaca fibre for commercialization, so that the women would be able to gain independence and control their own economic stability to improve their lives and the lives of their children.”

“Everyone was very motivated,” Lydia said, “willing to participate and open to new suggestions.” But empowerment itself is such a strong motivator, Lydia believes—“women realizing that they’re capable of doing amazing things and then banding together and doing them. Hopefully that energy and power is happening for the women in the Arequipa community.”

In both communities, “the projects were grassroots and participatory,” Lydia said, “so there were council meetings to discuss problems, and to talk about the things they want to learn and to work on.”

Working in a different language was at times stressful. In Lima, Lydia lived with Americans who were with different organizations, but they had that common ground of being overseas volunteers and helped each other, especially with the language. In Arequipa, she lived with a retired couple and enjoyed the support of a family “waiting for me when I came home, checking up on me, showing me around.”

“There was a lot of poverty,” Lydia said, “Having to see that on a regular basis, to see that desperation, keeps you motivated and reminds you why you’re there. You might miss your family and you might be going through hard times, but in the back of your mind you know that this is what you should be doing.”

During her time at Dalhousie, Lydia participated in a study abroad in Campeche, Mexico, and in Havana, Cuba. Yet, she found her Coady internship an entirely different experience from everything she has ever done.

“With study abroad you go with a group of people. Often you know them and you’re all doing exactly the same thing and find support in that. This time, I was the only intern going to South America. Obviously I discovered all the resilience I had in myself to keep going. Coming back you can try to explain what it was like, but you can come nowhere close to describing the whole process.” When I spoke to Lydia she was taking part in the interns’ debriefing program at the Coady International Institute, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish. “Right now we’re all going through some culture shock, trying to readjust and sharing experiences.”

Lydia is grateful to the Coady for selecting her for this internship. “I knew that I wanted to do something in development and through this experience I figured out exactly what it was: Peace and Conflict Resolution. I like the idea of trying to advocate peace. Without peace, development will be torn apart. I find that really interests me and I want to focus on that.”

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