Hello!

My name is Amanda Giang, a third year Engineering Science student at the University of Toronto. This summer, I’ve been given the privilege of volunteering with Engineers Without Borders in Zambia (if you’re not familiar with EWB, there’s more in the About section). So in about a month, I’m supposed to get on a plane, and start working on a project related to market access for small scale farmers (more on this later, I promise!). It’s a little overwhelming, because really, a month isn’t a very long time at all, especially considering how much I still have to learn about Zambia, agricultural value chains, and development in general. Over the past few months, I’ve tried to read up a little about what it means to work in development on the ground. It’s a bit of a mind shift for me, because before I knew I was going on this placement, a lot of what I’d read on the topic had felt very academic in nature, with realities conveyed through statistics, on a scale of nations. But projects are implemented on a community level, and change starts with individuals, and I’m excited to maybe learn a little more about what this means, and how I can be a part of it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what role I can, and what role I should play as an aspiring Canadian engineer (and also about how the answers to those questions might be different). I was initially hesitant about applying for this placement because I was less-than-confident in my technical engineering skills. The last time I tried to build something was kind of disastrous (“Maybe it can be an ornamental table rather than functional?”). But I was reassured that the work EWB does in Africa doesn’t necessarily require that I know how to operate a band saw. The approach EWB takes towards the problem of market access is much more about providing technical assistance in the development of organizational capacity—helping field workers build skills that make them more effective at brokering market relationships, and establishing monitoring systems to capture abstract organizational learning. I think this approach is a refreshing take on the role that an NGO can play—not as a funder, or a distributor of goods, but as an enabler of human development. 

It seems like everyone kind of acknowledges that the development industry is a flawed and frustrating system. Even if it is driven by a sincere desire for positive change (and there have certainly been allegations that this supposition is false), aid, be it material or technical assistance like EWB is providing, is at its heart “paternalistic.” Acknowledging these problems though, I feel like there is still potential to work within this framework to make meaningful change, that power dynamics can be equalized and not exploitative, and I respect EWB as an organization in that it supports the idea of working in partnership rather than giving charity. I guess I still have a lot of questions, and uncertainties, but I’m going to give this whole not-being-paralyzed-by-doubt thing a stab, and commit to action. I’ll try my best to be critical as I go though (and you should definitely give me a hand with that and post comments!).

Oh dear, so I guess that was a little long and rambling. I’m totally unused to writing in this format, and hopefully I’ll get better at it, so please bear with me!

Next update: what I’ll actually be doing for four months?