World Peace Scholar reports to Rotary International

Academic Activities & Progress


The first year in Argentina as a World Peace Fellow has been full of academic activities. It began last February in 2008 with the Intensive Spanish Course (CIE, according to the Spanish acronym) offered by the Universidad del Salvador (USAL) for which I received a “10” on a grading scale of “1-10”.



Immediately following the CIE, the master’s program began in March of 2008 with a full load of classes that consisted of required core courses as well as classes from not only my chosen specialization, the Economy, Development, and Cooperation track, but also the Peace and Conflict Resolution track. The courses were Systematic Approaches to International Relations, Ethics and International Relations, Theories of Conflict & Development in the Social Sciences, Causes and Resolution of Conflict, Structure and Process of International Cooperation. Some of the topics in which I focused my research in these classes were multilateral education and the existence of two concepts of education at the international level, evangelicalism in Guatemala as a form of Christian fundamentalism, and the emerging conflict in Mexico related to narco-trafficking. According to the same grading scale mentioned above, I received three “9”s and two “10”s in these courses. It was a very successful first quarter in which I began to build the academic foundation for the next two quarters.


The second quarter was extremely rigorous and enjoyable. The courses for this quarter included International Public Law, International Political Economy, International Security, and Development Models and Processes in Latin America. My areas of focus for research consisted of the recent draft Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights that will provide an avenue to bring claims of violations of rights such as the right to education. The study and promotion of the right to education and the guarantee of education as a basic human right have been priorities in my studies in the master’s program as well my participation in extracurricular activities that have consisted of volunteering with the Global Campaign for Education here in Argentina (see below for more information). I received two “10”s and two “8”s for these second quarter courses.


During the break between the second and third quarters in September of 2008, I participated in the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action & Strategies (CANVAS) training during the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) annual conference in Portland, Oregon in September 2008. This was the first CANVAS training presented in North America and provided me with another opportunity to hone my skills in the areas of peaceful conflict management. I received a full scholarship to participate in this training and was one of only 30 participants chosen to take part in this unique experience.


The last quarter that began at the end of September 2008 was extremely busy due to taking four courses and placing a strong emphasis on developing my thesis topic. The courses that I took were Social Organizations in Latin America, Conflict, Development, and Cooperation in Latin America, Formulation and Negotiation of International Projects, and Research Methodology



1. Formulation and Negotiation of International Projects was of particular interest to me because of its practical focus. I learned a great deal in terms of learning the entire international project cycle and having the opportunity to compose a feasible international project proposal. Research Methodology was useful because of the time that it provided for developing my thesis problem. I have gone through a very long process of reading, changing ideas, and learning that one has to follow her heart and passion when making final decisions about a thesis. After spending nearly two months developing one thesis project idea that focused on education and conducting a case study on Argentina, I finally came around to my original idea of focusing on education, but incorporating the immigration element and doing a case study on Mexico where I plan to focus my professional endeavors in the future.


I am now working on my thesis, which focuses on education, immigration of children, and bilateral cooperation between the United States and Mexico on the subject of education of immigrant children. The objective of the thesis is to evaluate the Binational Migrant Education Program (BMEP), one component of the bilateral cooperation policy on education between the United States and Mexico, by conducting process tracking analysis of the program, interviewing key actors in the development and management of the program, and most importantly, utilizing data collected through interviews and other investigative techniques with children from three communities of Oaxaca still living in the communities with high levels of immigration and those children from the same communities who have emigrated to the Portland Metropolitan area of Oregon in the United States. As a concluding exercise in the thesis, I will provide a policy prescription based on the information gathered, indicating strengths and weaknesses of the bilateral cooperation policy on education between these two countries and proposing recommendations for its improvement. At the end of March and beginning of April of 2009, I will travel to Portland, Oregon and Oaxaca, Mexico to conduct primary research.


Rotary Involvement
I have had the opportunity to participate a great deal in Rotary activities during the first year of my fellowship. The following is a chronological list and description of these interactions:


Montserrat Rotary Club Meeting: February 21, 2008.


My first Rotary Club visit was to my host club, the Montserrat Rotary Club of the City of Buenos Aires with my Rotary counselor, Roberto Tarzi. The Montserrat Rotary Club is one of 42 clubs in District 4890, which comprises the clubs within the Federal District of Buenos Aries. During this meeting, I briefly presented my background, proposed course of study, and hopes for my time while Argentina. After attending this meeting, I wrote a brief summary of my professional/personal background and overall expectations of the fellowship.


La Lucila Rotary Club’s Día de las Mujeres Cocktail: March 10, 2008.
The La Lucila Rotary Club invited me to sing during its annual Día de las Mujeres (Women’s Day) Cocktail. I sang Gracias a la Vida, a song made famous by Argentina singer, Mercedes Sosa, and one of my original compositions, Charming You Are. It was an honor to have been asked to participate in this way during the event. The goal of the event was to recognize the achievements of women in Rotary, in particular, and in Argentina and the world, in general.


Welcome Lunch for World Peace Fellows: April 5, 2008.
Hugo Zeyen, World Peace Fellowship Coordinator, and the Rotary Center in Argentina hosted a welcome lunch for the new Peace Fellows as well as the second year fellows at his Café in Lomas del Palomar. The lunch provided us the chance to meet the host counselors of other fellows and continue fellowship-building with our counselors.


District 4890 Annual Conference: April 19, 2008.
I attended the annual conference, which was held at the Universidad del Belgrano, with two second-year Peace Fellows, but did not present as time constraint was an issue. However, the other Peace Fellows spoke on the importance of continuing to promote the fellowship in Argentina and other countries outside of North America and Europe with the goal of diversifying the scholar base. This is an important issue because, for example, four of the six peace fellows from my cohort are from the United States. There needs to be an effort to strengthen this aspect of the fellowship because its uniqueness resides in bringing scholars from all over the world together to study International Relations and Peace Studies.


District 4890 Annual District Planning Assembly: May 17, 2008.
I spoke about the World Peace Fellow requirements and my professional profile as a World Peace Fellow during the break out session related to Rotary Foundation programs during this annual planning assembly for new Rotary officers.


Montserrat Rotary Club Change of Authority Dinner: July 2, 2008.
My host counselor became the new Montserrat Rotary Club President and invited me to sing several songs during this special event.


Montserrat Rotary Club Meeting: July 24, 2008.
I gave a presentation to my host club about becoming involved with the Global Action Week and the Global Campaign for Education in Argentina. While some support emerged from the meeting, the Club made no formal commitments.


Catedral del Sur Rotary Club Meeting: November 20, 2008
I gave a presentation to this very small and friendly club about the Global Action Week and the Global Campaign for Education in Argentina. They were very enthusiastic about my participation in the project and provided me with contacts to obtain discounted printing for the 2009 Global Action Week.


Buenos Aires Rotaract Meeting: November 26, 2008
Together with a fellow World Peace Scholar, I gave an informal presentation with a question and answer session to Rotaractors and their guests who are interested in the Rotary World Peace Fellowship. We provided information about the application process, eligibility requirements, and our overall experience as Peace Fellows.


Montserrat Rotary Club End-of-the-Year Dinner: December 3, 2008
I attended my host club’s end-of-the-year celebration where I had the opportunity to meet visiting Rotarians from Canada.


Planning Meeting for Rotary Centers for International Studies Seminar: December 10, 2008
I participated in the first planning meeting for the annual seminar that Peace Fellows organize each year in the Rotary Centers for International Studies Seminar. We have submitted several ideas for the seminar theme to our Rotary contacts here in Argentina. All of the proposed themes have some type of relationship to the concept of the “Power of ideas and understanding cooperation, conflict, and development in the world.”


Villa Don Bosco Rotary Club Meeting: December 17, 2008
I gave a general presentation about my past professional and personal experiences and my current work as a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to this extremely laid back and welcoming club. The club members were extremely interested in one of my research focuses this year: the existence of two concepts of education in the international sphere (education as a human right and education as an economic input).


Volunteer/Internship Activities
Since February 2008, I became involved with the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), an international non-governmental organization charged with the task of monitoring the fulfillment of the Education for All goals established with the United Nations system by 2015 in alignment with the Millennium Development Goals. One of its main initiatives is the Global Action Week (GAW), which takes place in countries throughout the world, including Argentina. The purpose of the GAW is to raise awareness about education rights for all people of the world. The folks at the GCE headquarters put me in contact with the organizations that coordinate the GAW in Argentina.


My support has focused on writing a detailed funding proposal for my sponsoring Rotary district and a participation proposal for my host district here in Argentina. I have been working closely with individual Rotary clubs back in Portland as well as the leadership at the district level for District 5100 in garnering support for the Argentine education rights campaign. In addition, my host counselor and I have been collaborating on forming a plan for the participation of Argentine Rotary Clubs as well. The attached proposals explain the campaign in more detail.
Besides fundraising, I participated directly in the GAW during the week of April 21-27, 2008 by facilitating two lessons with three sixth grade classes in a struggling public school in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The lesson focused on encouraging students to think about the value of education and education rights. The lesson concluded with students making collages and written requests to government figures to provide everyone with a quality education. I will be accompanying these same students to the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires on May 7, 2008.


After the 2008 Global Action Week of the Global Campaign for Education, I continued to develop the strategic partnership among District 5100, District 4890, and the Argentina education campaign. Unfortunately, I ran into challenges with obtaining official support from Argentine clubs. Besides the fundraising, I worked with the planning committee of this event on evaluating the 2008 campaign to improve it for the next year. I currently have stepped out of an active role in the planning for the 2009 campaign due to my large commitment to researching and writing my thesis. However, I have maintained contact with the various representatives of the participating organizations in the campaign by writing a final paper about the campaign as a social movement for the third quarter course, Social Organizations in Latin America.


Successes & Challenges


With the purpose of providing information that spans the entire first year of the fellowship period, I have included the successes and challenges that I mentioned in my first Rotary report, which covered the period of February-April 2008. I have marked the new successes and challenges by using the triangle-shaped bullet point.


Successes
My successes during my first year as a World Peace Fellow have been many. They are the following:
Overall high performance in both the Intensive Spanish Course and the master’s courses. As I have noted, my grades have been excellent in all courses taken in the Master’s program. More importantly, however, is the academic growth that I have gained during the first year. My research and analytic skills have improved greatly as has my overall knowledge base of particular topics of interest related to the International Relations field such as education multilateralism, human rights and international law, and project formulation, negotiation, and management.
Successful participation in Global Campaign for Education in Argentina. I have been successful in starting a partnership-building process between Rotary and a dozen education-related organizations in Argentina through my work with the Global Campaign for Education.
Identification of a thesis topic that is relevant. When I write “relevant”, I want to emphasize that the topic is not only relevant to the field of International Relations, but also to my sponsoring Rotary community (Portland) and to my own professional aspirations. Making the decision to do my case study about immigrant children from Oaxaca, Mexico that have immigrated to the Portland Metropolitan area was a success for me because I followed my heart and made a decision to do a case study on Mexico despite the myriad challenges that may arise. It is a topic that is more relevant to my life and home community than the previous topic that would have entailed a case study on Argentina.


Challenges
There have been some key challenges in the master’s program thus far. They are the following:
Lack of a Pre-Master Prep Course: Given the various academic backgrounds of the Peace Fellows due and the professional experience requirement, many Fellows do not have theoretical knowledge in International Relations and Sociology, or have not applied it for many years due to having worked in other sectors prior to starting the USAL master’s program. A pre-master prep course of approximately 3 months prior to the commencement of the master’s program would prepare Fellows for this adjustment. Currently, we are extremely overwhelmed and frustrated by our overall lack of International Relations and, in my case specifically, sociological backgrounds.


Course Overload: Part of the goal of being a Rotary World Peace Fellow is to take part in cultural activities while in the host country. Unfortunately, the recent changes to the USAL program, requiring students to be in class Monday-Friday and, at times, on Saturday, prevents us from fulfilling this cultural aspect of the fellowship because when we are not in class, we are reading the required text or writing papers, literally spending on average 12 hours per day in the library, at the university, or at home studying and in class. Of course, a master’s program should be rigorous. However, a course load of four courses instead of five is a more realistic expectation of the fellows. One should take into account that only two years ago, the Fellows at the USAL were only required to take two to three courses. While this may have been too few, the program has gone to the other extreme of expecting an overwhelming course load.
Majority of Text in English: Surprisingly, the majority of course text is written in English. While this is an advantage for native English speakers, it is an obvious disadvantage for those Fellows whose first language is neither English nor Spanish. The professors should put as much effort in finding translated versions of the text because as Fellows at USAL, we chose the program assuming that not only the courses, but also the text would be in Spanish. Of course, we expect some text to be written in English as the vast majority of current literature in International Relations is published in this language.

Course Material/Photocopy System: The system for obtaining the course materials through photocopying is an extremely disorganized. Fellows waste, on average, two-four hours per week searching for text that is missing from the library or photocopy store. I suggest that each course comes with a text packet already made up and is included in the price of the course or at least have the text packets pre-made for each course for the entire quarter.
Lack of Materials for Thesis Research: It has become evident already that obtaining books and other written material for our thesis research will be a challenge. Because the majority of up-to-date research in the field of International Relations is conducted in English, we will need access to these books. Unfortunately, our options in Argentina are limited. Therefore, we will have to spend, I am anticipating, hundreds of dollars to buy and ship books for our thesis. Some solid brainstorming is needed to resolve this issue that appears to have affected USAL fellows for several years now.
Too few practical courses and opportunities to apply theoretical knowledge. There appears to be a gap between the very theoretical master’s degree program offered at the USAL and the type of more practical international development careers for which the Peace Fellowship is meant to prepare its Fellos. One way to remedy this would be to offer courses that entail a more practical component. Another way would be to take advantage of the many international development agencies operating in Argentina through the establishment of internships opportunities for the Peace Fellows to complete during their time studying. However, to make this feasible, the master’s program would need to return to the less intensive 2-year version. I believe that Peace Fellows would be much better prepared professionally if they were able to apply the theoretical aspects of the master’s program courses to the practical experience of an internship. This internship would not replace the Applied Field Experience, but would rather make the master’s program more applicable to the assumed career path of Peace Fellows.
Few opportunities for mentorship by professors. The reality of professors in Argentina is that they generally have a full time job during the day and give university classes in the evening. As a result, an institutionalized environment for the professors to mentor students does not exist because of lack of time, space, and willingness. While most professors go out of their way to meet with students when needed and provide as much guidance as possible, they are not able to do so at the level that master’s students should receive. While I may be mistaken, this is quite different from the other Rotary Centers for International Studies. I suggest that more resources from the Rotary Foundation be destined to the USAL Rotary Center for International Studies for the purpose of developing the master’s program more, taking into account the importance of supporting the only Center in a non-economic North country and recognizing that access to institutional resources are probably more limited in Argentina than in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and Japan. It is vitally important to support Rotary Centers that are located in developing countries because they provide more opportunities for qualified candidates in developing countries to learn about the Rotary World Peace Fellowship and they provide distinct approaches to studying international relations and international conflict resolution.

Overall Impressions
As I mentioned in the first Rotary report, I have been very impressed with the faculty/staff and the overall course offerings of the USAL master’s program. In particular, the professors have very diverse academic and professional backgrounds and provide alternative views to international relations to which most people from the United States are exposed. It also still continues to impress me that in any given class there are students from at least 11 distinct countries. This provides a unique richness to the classes.
Living, working, and studying abroad are always times when the best and the worst of me come out. The last year has been no different. It has given me a chance to reflect continually on my interactions with other people and evaluate how I can improve those encounters and relationships. This is the type of experience that allows Fellows, or at least me, to grow and gain new skills outside of the classroom that will benefit me as much personally as professionally.

1 Final course grades for the third quarter have not been released as of February 2, 2009.

2 To provide a comprehensive overview of my Rotary involvement during the entire first year of the fellowship, I have kept all activities listed in the First Rotary Report from February-April 2008.

3 Please note the first three paragraphs of this section are taken from my First Rotary Report. The remaining paragraphs provide updates to my participation in the Global Campaign for Education in Argentina.