Final Reflections on IEDP

Today was our last class together as the 2013-14 IEDP cohort *tear. Someone from Penn came to talk with us about our internships (legistic stuff) and it was so amazing as we went around the room each one naming the country he/she is going to be in for the summer.
Some include:
    Kenya
    Tanzania
    Uganda
    France
    Germany
    Nigeria
    Peru
    India
    Chile
    Samoa
    Philippines
    South Africa

There was so much excitement and anticipation in the room. We all look forward to our internship and some of us are also looking forward to graduation in just two weeks! Being our last class, we took some time to reflect on what we have learned this year. We each shared our "ah ha" moments and how we have changed since orientation day.

Some, like me, reflected on the moment when they realized that development work is insanely complicated!! That it's this big mess of intersections and overlapping. We laughed as we thought back to the end of the first semester when most of us felt like saying "so why on earth are we even here?" Sometimes the complexity of development, education more specifically, can seem overwhelming. You can begin to feel paralyzed that whatever you do is going to be wrong and you'll end up just doing more harm than good. I can testify to the fact that we have had many conversations around this throughout the year. Yet, today was not about discouragement or fear but about hope. Just because you can't change everything doesn't mean you can't and shouldn't change ONE thing. You can't force change. Not at a macro level or the individual level. What I've learned to see though is that there are opportunities all around and what we can do is be ready when those opportunities present themselves. Be ready to give your thoughts or suggestion, be ready to speak into someone's life, be ready to effect change.

Walking away from IEDP we also go with new tools in our belts. We now know how to make a logframe, write a technical proposal and a policy brief!  And perhaps most importantly, we walk away with new friends. Friends who will also be trying to make little changes in the pockets that they are working in. Friends who can hopefully help us get jobs one day soon :) Friends who can encourage and support us when this work gets hard and we feel discouraged that we aren't making as much difference as we hoped we would. I have enjoyed meeting each and every person in our cohort this year. We all bring such different perspectives and experiences and yet we learned to value one another. I hope to keep in contact with them for a long time to come!