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BHA Recap

About a month into the semester, the Class of 2017 decided to partner with the Burlington Housing Authority in order to begin developing our local project. We decided to work with BHA’s after school program and create lesson plans related to sustainable agriculture and healthy living. We began sending 3 to 4 members of our group to the site once a week to teach a brief lesson and engage in some sort of interactive activity.

Everything seemed to be going really well for the first few weeks of the semester, and the kids seemed to really love our presence! We are so happy to say that during out last visit of the semester, the kids expressed their sincere happiness for our time spent at the center! We did a recap activity with the kids in which we asked them to share their favorite lessons and some things they learned during our time with them. We were so impressed with how well the students retained the information and how enthusiastic they remained up until our last visit.

The students were sad to hear that it was our final week, but they are so excited for us to continue working with them in the spring! We have spoken with the administration at BHA and we hope to plan an event with them towards the end of the year to highlight all of the work we have done with the kids.

This semester has had some tough moments for the Class of 2017, but BHA has consistently been such a positive part of our group and we are SO happy to have the opportunity to work with them! We can’t wait to get back in the new year!

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2017s: Week 2

After getting settled into the spring semester, we are excited about where we are headed as Pericleans! The newest addition to our classroom dynamic is  committees. Our committees are: events, grant-writing, alumni relations, social media, steering committee, social, and the “committee on committees.” We started out class giving brief updates on the work all the committees are doing. While we have yet to make significant progress on anything because the semester has just begun, we had plenty of great ideas to share.

A few committee highlights include:

  • Planning for the 2018 Induction Ceremony
  • Brainstorming ways to connect with alumni, including the creation of a Periclean LinkedIn account
  • Methods of advertising Periclean, particularly to first-year students
  • Creating a weekly update email
  • Creating a list of relevant cultural events to attend
  • Developing a mentor/mentee program between the 2017 and 2018 classes

We finished up our class by discussing a possible focus for our group. At the end of last semester, it seemed as if the general consensus was to work with child headed households and see if we could create a project from there. However, after brainstorming in small groups, it seems as though we are collectively leaning towards looking for a target community or region in Namibia before making other decisions.

Overall, we are extremely happy with the progress that we have made in only two weeks. The division of committees is an organized and helpful addition to our classroom environment. Stay updated for more progress on our project ideas and future fundraising events!

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This Week’s Classes: Class of 2017

This week, our class began presenting on the various topics that we have been researching for the past month. The first group to present focused on the culture of Namibia. We heard a wide variety of interesting facts, as well as the history of the different tribes in Namibia. I think that it is so interesting that there is a ¼ chance that each one of us is a descendent of a Namibian tribe! Thanks for all of those interesting facts, culture team! It’s really important that our class understands and respects the culture of Namibia, and I definitely feel well informed after that presentation!

On wednesday, the government and politics group presented! It was very clear that each person in this group has a passion for this topic. The Namibian government is very different from the United States, and this group also did a great job of informing the class on the most important facts that we should have a good understanding of. This group focused on international relations, the poverty and wealth gap, environmental and social policies, as well as the history and how the variety of political parties came to be. This presentation, without a doubt, helped our class better understand the history of the country! We can’t wait to hear more from the other groups!

We  also go the opportunity to hear from Professor Heidi Frontoni who teaches in the  African American Studies department and was the mentor for the Periclean Scholars  Ghana class of 2010. She gave us amazing insight of how we should approach our project and set our future goals. She advised us not to focus on the rockstar topics that we cannot get our hands around such as HIV/AIDS orphans, because we will not be able to make a difference in that sort of area. She said that it would be beneficial to focus on something simple and manageable and set clear goals and strive towards meeting benchmarks to reach them. She highly recommended that we make a 3 year plan individually and as a class, to help us stay on track, and to help us see where we would like to end up. Because Professor Frontoni’s class was so successful, we should take her advice to heart and start to set manageable goals.

 

-Katie and Melanie

 

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Melanie Mackin Introduction

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Hi, my name is Melanie Mackin and I am from Long Island, New York. I am a Finance/Accounting double major with a minor in Economics. On campus I am involved in relay for life, club volleyball, the Pendulum, and Greek life. 

During my fall semester of last year I had the wonderful opportunity of having Carol talk to my global class about the Periclean Scholars program. From the minute that Carol started describing the program I knew that I wanted to be a part of this very special organization. I am interested in global health issues, human rights, and world cultures- and I want to continue to expand my knowledge of these topics during the duration of this program. I was able to travel to Malawi, Africa this past summer and met so many incredible individuals. I learned so much about not only that area of the world, but about myself as well. I’m looking forward to continuing my education on African culture and then having the ability to execute our service project come senior year.
My expectations for this semester are simple: To bond together as a group and to learn as much about Namibia as possible. I think that if we can accomplish these two things over the next three months we will have the ability to start tackling all of the goals that we have in mind. Im very excited to see what issue(s) our project will aim at and how we can positively effect the lives of the people of Namibia. I cannot wait to begin this journey with each and every one of you!
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