Story & Photos by Elisabeth Bishop
UO junior Christina Schueler spent part of her fall term living and working in Le Village Des Arts, an artist commune in Dakar, Senegal. For three-and-a-half weeks she worked with a wood carver in Le Village.
“I thought I was going to learn how to carve wood,” Schueler says. “It ended up that there was a lot more behind it.”
Schueler, an art major, was impressed by the sense of community in Le Village.
“Everything in Senegal, you can’t do anything without someone else,” she says. “These sculptures…are very collaborative objects. My first sculpture especially had a lot of my professor in it and a lot of me in it.”
Her wood sculptures will be one of fourteen entries in Tuesday’s International Projects Fair (IPF). The IPF will showcase projects completed by students while abroad in countries ranging from Argentina to India.
“[The IPF] shows what determined students can achieve when they find the right international experience for themselves,” says Roger Adkins, assistant director of study abroad programs. “It can be daunting, though, looking at the UO study abroad website, where there are over 165 programs in just under 100 countries. The fair brings this dilemma down to the human scale, showing how a single student…participating in a single program can achieve something noteworthy.”
UO seniors Dian Du and Isabell Zhu, the only international students to enter projects in the IPF, hope to introduce the American concept of textbook recycling to their native China. After volunteering in Eugene elementary schools, they founded a non-profit called Transforming Waste Into Empowerment to give rural students greater access to textbooks and educational materials.
“In China…we dump our textbooks every year and it’s just a huge waste,” Zhu says. “Some [rural students] have never seen computers before, or a TV. That creates a huge gap between the city and country.”
They hope to bridge the education gap in China’s Hunan Province by matching urban schools with underprivileged rural schools. Du and Zhu have identified at least one rural school to receive donated textbooks, and they are currently looking for an urban school. The pair, along with about twenty volunteers, plans to begin tabling and fundraising events in late February.
Teams of UO faculty and administrators will judge IPF projects in two categories, research projects and experiential projects.
“A few modest prizes will be awarded, but I think the larger incentive is the chance for the participants to share what they have learned and what they have been able to do while abroad,” Adkins says. “If last year’s fair was any indication, some students have an unmistakable need to share these life-transforming experiences with others.”
The IPF will be held Tuesday, February 22 in the EMU Fir Room from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
International Fair Shares Handmade Souvenirs
Ethos
February 21, 2011
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