Ramblings on Development

Honour is important in many cultures. To a lot of people, even if they don’t verbally acknowledge it, however, honour is equated with pride.
If you want to help people that own less economic resources than you, you have to be humble. People won’t appreciate your help (or at least not as much) – both in monetary and education terms – if you treat them like children that cannot fend for themselves. If you take a paternalistic approach to their problem and treat them like individuals of a value of a lower standard than yours, they will abhor your aid. They will dislike your kind. You are not one of them, therefore, you cannot understand them.
People won’t change unless they want to change. And, they won’t take your help if they don’t think they truly need it. Sometimes just being there and supporting them and letting them know that you will help them once they need your help is enough.

: 24 Apr 2005 19:57 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

EU Students

Today I went onto the Student's Union website and saw that a survey has been produced for international students, asking them what they think about the resources available to them by the SU. Although I am not trully an international student, I filled in the survey.
A few days ago, in one of our lectures, someone from the elections committee in the Student's Union announced that they were looking for more representation from female international students. I thought it could be an interesting thing to do…
BUT, the problem is: I am not an international student, well, kind of. I am a home student, well, not really. My problem is that I am an EU student.
For those of you that don´t know the implications of this, it means that although I pay the same university fees than all the British people here (which is really great!) I am not treated as an equal to the British in anything else. I have difficulties opening a bank account, no one wants to give me a mobile and I have to pay extortionate amounts of money if I get an overdraft.
This does not mean that I am treated like an international student either. I get no campus accommodation during my final year, I am offered no orientation week, or have a real say in international students affairs (which means that although I took the survey, it will probably get discarded).
Thus, my problem is that I am an EU student: I don´t properly fit into any University/Student's Union/bureaucratic category and am completely unrepresented.
There are quite a lot of us around, so why do they always forget us?

: 22 Jan 2005 12:06 |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem