Below is a link to our groups final paper summarizing our experiences and research. Please let me know what you think!
Sex Trafficking in Europe – Final Paper
Thanks!
Below is a link to our groups final paper summarizing our experiences and research. Please let me know what you think!
Sex Trafficking in Europe – Final Paper
Thanks!
Four months ago, I had no idea what to expect from a newly formed Virginia Tech program called “Presidential Global Scholars.” I can now honestly say that it far exceed my thoughts, exceptions, and dreams! It has been a semester full of wonderful professors, incredible travel, and unforgettable experiences.
There were a few rough moments and a horrific tragedy, but Hokies have a unique way of staying strong, of building community, and of turning bad circumstances into the best they can be (given the current circumstances).
One of the BIGGEST things that I learned was how to “tell my story,” without worrying too much about how it may “look” to others. Studying sex trafficking in Europe was way outside of my comfort zone! I even had several people express concern about “how it might look to be ‘studying sex trafficking,'” but I quickly realized I did not care what others MIGHT think about such a topic, because sex trafficking is something that I strongly believe HAS to be STOPPED!
In the end, I found myself having a wonderful new group of friends, a better understanding of how the world works, and a great new perspective on life. I wish the Presidential Global Scholars program the best of luck and hope to help it out in anyway possible. 🙂
Professor Elisio Macamo, from the African Studies department of Basel University, recently told me “Sometimes the best way to help people, is not to hurt them.”
My initial reaction was to roll my eyes and laugh at this comment that was clearly beyond cliché. As Professor Macamo continued elaborating on this point all I could think about was that I truly had a passion for helping others and there was NOOOO way he was not going to convince me differently.
Five minutes later my entire thought structure was broken. I felt like all of my thoughts on development, humanitarian aid, and compassion for others had shifted slightly. But how? I had only met Professor Macamo a few minutes prior to our discussion, so how had I let him turn me upside-down so quickly?
He basically said something to the extent of, if you want someone to have a better life it would make sense to help them right? This is true, but only if what you are doing is actually helping them. However, a tremendous amount of people get hurt through development programs, humanitarian aid, and “compassion.” It must be something far beyond “helping people fix their problems,” if you ever actually want to solve any of the worlds problems.
So what does this mean? Every action has an reaction. It is as simple as that. If you buy a chocolate bar, it very well could have been produced by trafficked individuals, thus incentivizing the cycle of poor labor standards to continue. If the United States gives immediate food aid to Haiti it may help in the short term, but that action can also put local agri-businesses out of business which in return increases the local poverty rate. On the other hand, if we take no stance at all, this inaction can also have serious negative consequences as well (something that I have really learned by living in Switzerland for the past four months where neutrality is key to life).
An example of how inaction on an issue can be just as damaging (if not worse) can currently be seen in Syria. No matter if you believe the US should be involved in stopping this matter or not, almost everyone agrees that a country intentionally killing its our citizens is despicable, even if it does fall under the countries right to sovereignty. So the international communities inaction has the effect of “hurting” the people of Syria by letting them to continue to die every day that we, as a planet, just sit and watch.
So what is the solution? If we really focus on “not just helping people, but just not hurting people” then they will be able to better help themselves. People are, for the most part, willing to put in the hard work to better their surroundings if they know that what they are going to do is going to “make a difference.” Of course their are exceptions (like Syria to some extent), but it is the unnecessary harm that developed societies and their people put on less developed societies that seems to causes the most harm in this natural development process whether it is directly or indirectly, intended or accidental. If we switch our focus to just not hurting these other societies or people, not out of a selfish desire to only focus on our self’s, but out of a desire to do more than just “help” or to “just fix their problems” we can all share a much better world with a higher quality of life for everyone.
The way I now see it, thanks to Professor Macamo, is that not hurting people shows more compassion and dedication than the traditional sense of “helping people.” The only way to “not hurt others” with your day-to-day life is to be informed, care about yourself, your community, and the consequences of your actions. I know that I am no longer only going to focus on helping others, but take it one step farther and focus on “not hurting others” from now on and I challenge you to do the same!
For the past three weeks or so I have been listening to The Avett Brothers pretty much everyday. A song that in the past I always skipped over was “The Weight of Lies” just because it was sad and slow pace, but recently I decided to listen to it all the way through and totally fell in love with the song… The lyrics are below.
“Disappear from you hometown
Go and find the people that you know
Show them all you good parts
Leave town when bad ones start to show
Go and wed a woman
A pretty girl that you’ve never met
Make sure she knows you love her well
But don’t make any other promises
The weight of lies will bring you down
And follow you to every town
Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there
So when you run make sure you run
To something and not away from
Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere
I once heard the worse thing
A man could do is draw a hungry crowd
Tell everyone his name, pride, and confidence
But leaving out his doubt
I’m not sure I bought those words
When I was young I knew most everything
These words have never met so much to anyone
As they now mean to me
The weight of lies will bring you down
And follow you to every town
Cause nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there
So when you run make sure you run
To something and not away from
Cause lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you down”
This has really gotten me thinking about “The Weight of Lies” lately. I think that The Avett Brothers are really onto something with how big of a burden lies can be. We have ALL lied in our past, but how often do they turn out well (even if the only consequence is the weight on our own moral standards)? I would love to hear your thoughts about the song/lyrics/and even the band in general!
Back in February I learned that just like the currency exchange rate, one can easily leave Morocco with much more than they went with.
On Thursday, February 8th (after sleeping on the airport floor), I left Milan-Malpensa Airport with Michael Morrison and Daniel Smalls heading for Marrakech, Morocco for our first of our two mini-spring breaks. The original plan was to go to Marrakech for two days and then move onto either Rabat or Casablanca for a night, before training to Tangier to cross the Straight of Gibraltar into Tarifa, Spain and then bus onward up to Seville in order to catch our flight back to Milan.
However, the trip did not turn out quite like the original plan (Travel Tip #1: Always be ready to be flexible when traveling internationally, especially in underdeveloped countries or regions), but it ended up still being fantastic!
After getting off of the airplane in Marrakech, I quickly realized how cold and dry the air was and that it smelled of a mixture of dust and various spices. Another near instant observation was how friendly, yet cautious everyone seemed to be when interacting with “Americans”.
After getting on the number 19 bus that took the group to the closes bus stop to the “Jamaa El-Fna” (also know as “the Fna), we headed through the utter chaos of the Fna and its weaving pedestrians, motorcycles, cars, trucks, donkeys, snake charmers, musicians, and shopping stands (at this point I found it very interesting to consistently watch Michael and Dan’s faces since it was the first developing country either of them had been to). Although I must say that for being in Africa, it was much more developed than I had expected, even though the rural outskirts of the city did seem much less developed than the Fna district.
As we walked through the crowded Fna staring at everything we passed with curiosity we noticed that the locals became curious as well. I will admit that we were probably pretty easy to pick out since we were three young, white males with English text on our clothing, carrying suitcases and backpacks through the streets turning our attention to almost everything in sight for at least a couple of seconds. We quickly learned that when the Moroccan people become curious they take that as a prime opportunity to sell something, anything! We had people trying to show us to our Riad (basically a traditional hostel) for a small fee, to sell us street-crafted food, traditional Moroccan clothing and goods, sunglasses, postcards, snakes, pictures with monkeys… They were trying ANYTHING that could possibly make them a dollar! It was a bit overwhelming at first, but easily controlled after the first hour or two in the city. The strategy that seemed to work the best was to wear sunglasses and ONLY use our peripheral vision, look slightly upset, and to walk with purpose. This worked especially well when we were in denser areas and there were weaker looking pray around (as bad as that sounds).
The streets were chaos! A narrow alleyway could at any point have hundreds of humans, motorcycles, cars, horse-drawn carriages, and various other roadblocks that had to carefully be maneuvered around to reduce the risk of being hassled by store owners or by getting hit by the irresponsible and almost always speeding motorcycles that plagued the city.
One afternoon Michael and I were walking around just exploring and found a small music shop that was owned by four brothers. As we explored the shop we knew that we had to bring Dan, our groups musician, back to the shop. So a few hours later, with Dan, we went back to the shop and once again started talking to the brothers who were extremely nice! After several minutes of looking though their shelves of drums, stringed instruments, and novelty instruments they offered to make tea for us, which we gladly accepted. We then spent the next couple hours jamming out on instruments and talking about the differences (and similarities) between Marrakesh and our hometowns. At the end of the evening Dan ended up buying a traditional Ghanaian instrument that slightly resembles a bass guitar and one of the brothers named Chafiq took us to his favorite local restaurant for dinner where we could get “real Moroccan food.”
This got me thinking …
We all knew Chafiq was a business man, and that by being nice to us his chances of a sell increased exponentially. However, we are now Skype friends and we have shared several e-mails full of pictures from our trip and kind regards. So at what point was this kindness his marketing strategy versus his sincere kindness/interest towards us? He had been taking English classes and said that talking to us helped him with that, but I guess this asks an even bigger question; what is friendship (I know that this question is much bigger than I can possibly answer in a couple hundred words, but it is still worth discussing)? How self-centered can friendship be, and still be a “true friend?” Even in the states this seems to be a colossal issue! So many people network for the sole purpose of self-interest, but where has the compassion of friendship gone, or did it ever leave? Is this just the nature of friendship and an acquaintance only turns into a “true friend” after the long process of developing mutual compassion and respect for each other? That is what I am currently leaning towards, but that means that most of the time that people become friends it is because they ask “what is in it for me to become this persons friend,” and find something worth while even if the product they desire is only knowledge. In Chafiq’s case, or anyone else’s in that matter, can they be blamed? If they are just trying to earn a dollar, whether they want to be friends or not (although, in this case I honestly think he did), to support their family; Is there anything wrong with that? These thoughts, over the past few days, has really changed they way I have been interacting with people, although I am not fully confident that it should…
What are your thoughts?
The other day in Bratislava, Slovakia (we went just for a day trip) Michael, Dad, and I were riding the public bus and started talking to the girl sitting beside me. We started out by asking her for a recommendation on a good restaurant near the city center. She ended up suggesting a Japanese place, after which we continued talking. After a couple of minutes of corny jokes, Dad asked her if she was a student and what she was studying. She giggled slightly.
“I am studying Japanese language” she said.
After a few more jokes someone asked her how she has decided to start studying Japanese and her answer was shocking. She said, “one day my father asked me what my plans for the day were and before I could respond he told me I was to start studying Japanese. So I did, and I have ever since.”
I could not understand this! Guessing by her age, her father probably grew up in a young post-World War 2 Czechoslovakia that was all about harsh control and “community”, but 20 years after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and almost 70 years since World War 2; how could this be? Who was to blame for this, her dad, culture, or society? What effect had this philosophy had on an entire generation, almost 70 years since it was “main stream”? What was her dreams? What would she have chosen? How many more generations will this ideology still be a major influence?
This really hit me hard because of our research project on human trafficking. Even though she was not being trafficked, her freedom to choose her life path had been taken away. Sure, it was taken by her father (who hopefully had her best interest in mind) rather than a pimp, or slave owner, but it was still not in her hands. At what point does this become a serious crime against freedom?
Later in our conversation with this young lady, she went on to say that at first she had hated Japanese, but over time she really developed a love for it.
Was this really her passion? Or was it something she had just developed a respect for over time? Is there a difference? I guess I will never know her thoughts on the issue…
I may be over thinking this particular instance, and the work on our human trafficking project may have made me overly sensitive to womens ability to make decisions for themselves, but it is something to think about! Either way, I would love to hear everyone else’s thoughts, so please post a comment with what you think about the issue.
Yesterday, as part of the PGS program I was traveling through Naples, Italy and went to an ancient Roman theater on the edge of the city. There I had the opportunity to read the following poem on the main stage…
“The farmer cleaves the earth with his curved plough
This is his yearlong work, thus sustains
His homeland, thus his little grandchildren,
His herds and trusty bullocks. Never a Pause!
The seasons teem with fruits, the young of clocks,
Or sheaves of Ceres’s corn; they load the furrows
And burst and barns with produce. Then, come winter,
The olive press is busy; sleek with acorns
The pigs come home; the arbutes in the woods
And high on sunny terraces of rock
The mellow vintage ripens.” – Virgil
This was a pretty amazing moment of my day! Knowing that as a participant of this program, I was at least partially removed from my normal thoughts of agriculture production, education, and development, but that what I have been learning as part of this program is relevant to my future career and has proven to be full of wonderful experiences in general. I needed this reminder of how SPECTACULAR agriculture really is!!!
I am all about encouraging people, but I think the modern study of leadership is on a razor blades edge, because in some cases it is almost at the point where it says “If you give it your all, that is good enough” and sadly that is just not always true. I wish it was, but sometimes one’s best will not be “good enough” and we as a society have become so sensitive to this mentality that we can NOT fail at anything… Since when is failing a totally bad thing? Since when does everyone have to be the best at everything?
This blog is a response to an article that we discussed in one of my classes last week. The article is entitled: “Shared Leadership in Teams: An Investigation of Antecedent Conditions and Performance” and it argues that “Shared Leadership” is the best thing since sliced bread. I do believe that it is a very powerful tool to use when developing a leadership strategy, but not always the best. It seems to me that studying leadership theories can be very useful in knowing how to effectively handle a situation, but it can also be bulky, and at times harmful. For example, leadership is a practical skill. It is something that is fluid, adaptive, and specialized, but when there is so much study on theory this adaptability, this fluidity can quickly disappears. When a leader loses his or her ability to adapt, they lose their leadership style and effectiveness.
However, the one part of the paper that I mostly agree with is the section that says:
“…our findings suggest that external leaders should engage in supportive coaching of teams to facilitate the development of shared leadership. This coaching can be in the form of encouraging, reinforcing, and rewarding instances in which team members demonstrate leadership, assisting teams when internal conflicts arise, providing general encouragement to a team as a whole, and being available for suggestions or input into the team’s task strategies as needed.”
Through my personal experiences, I have found that having an external facilitator can be a very effective way to gather a group consensus, but ONLY if the facilitator knows what he/she is doing. This method can help eliminate group tensions in conversation by having a “neutral” voice leading discussion and voting. My problem lies here… If a facilitator does not know how to properly conduct this type of setting it can lead to a extremely devastating conclusion!
Any group or team needs to be very careful when deciding how to use a “team” or “shared leadership” approaches, because it can be a great tool, but it can also make the group quickly digress.
On January 21st, I and several other students here in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland set out on a journey, one that many of us underestimated. This expedition started early in the morning and took almost the entire day. Our goal: to climb to the top of Mount San Giorgio. This goal seemed like it might be a relatively quick hike with slow gradual slopes winding up to the top. However, that assumption was wrong! I left the villa with a camelback water bottle, a jacket, and a book bag full of food, assuming that would be plenty. Shortly after leaving I noticed that our group was moving at a staggering speed through the flat streets of Riva, but assumed that we would slow down by the time we reached the edge of the mountain.
Unfortunately, this assumption was also false. As we started to climb the extremely steep path to the top we saw a sign that suggested it would be roughly three hours and forty-five minutes to the top, but with the rate of speed at which we were going I could not believe it would take anywhere near that long to reach the summit. After only an hour and a half I was dripping sweat, already drank almost all of my water, and discovered how in-shape everyone else there was. It ended up taking three and a half hours to reach the top, and a lot of perseverance!
At points we were climbing a forty five degree incline all while there was a rock wall to your right and a vertical drop of to your left, but that made making it to the top that much more spectacular! Climbing the last few hundred feet and looking off the edge over the steel blue lake was an incredible feeling! That feeling was phenomenal, because I rarely push myself physically that hard, for that long, to see something that marvelous!
After a few minutes in quiet reflection while eating my lunch at the top of S. Giorgio, I just stared off into the distance imaging what the region must have been like 400 B.C. (which happens to be when scientist think the first men inhabited the area).
This entire experience taught me several different things: 1) research is important, 2) take plenty of water where ever you go!, 3) perseverance really pays off, and 4) it is really powerful to have people push you way beyond your perceived ability, because without the group I went with there is not way I would have made it to the top. Know, I knew a lot of this information before this experience, but I and human nature in general seem to forget lessons learned if we are not reminded on occasion.