Building Global Bridges 2013: One more day of shooting

Thursday, August 1, 2013

One more day of shooting

Tomorrow will be the last day of taking photos for the Brettonwood students. One of my jobs every night is to download and sift through the images they take. One night I stayed up for a few hours writing them comments on easy techniques they could use to improve shakiness or exposure issues. The next afternoon I told them that if they were interested they could come and see what I had written. In the end only one student asked about my comments, but I wasn't so disappointed because of how much I enjoyed looking through their images. Even though my role in teaching the kids (technical support) has been relatively small, the experience really has me thinking about pursuing teaching. I'm so thrilled to see how one assignment given to a group of people can yield so many different results.

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Purpose of BGB

The “Building Global Bridges through Community Engaged Research in Durban South Africa” (hereinafter referred to as the “Global Bridges” project) was created in partnership between the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond VA (US) and the University of Kwazulu Natal (Durban, SA). The Global Bridges project utilizes a multi-dimensional approach to international community engagement that simultaneously incorporates study and research abroad experiences. Through a composite of research training and cultural learning activities, students participate in building global cross-peer relationships; designing, implementing and evaluating research methods (photovoice and semi structured interviews) used to assess and address health needs and quality of life in a poor and historically marginalized community (Kenneth Gardens). Through this experience students from UKZN and VCU are prepared to function as culturally-competent professionals in an increasingly globalized environment as public and community health global ambassadors. A core component of the “Global Bridges” project is its cross-peer training in which university students mentor and help guide local high school students in photovoice—a research methodology that allows the high school students (called learners) to examine and explore their community as novice researchers. The main research methods used in the project are:

A. Photo voice with 15 Brettonwood school students

B. Semi-structured interviews and health needs assessment

a. Users of local community health clinic at Kenneth Gardens

b. Key community informants

C. Video capturing cross-cultural collaborative learning between VCU-UKZN students and project process