Seed: Students for Education Empowerment and Development

One of the more difficult things to accomplish in the internship is maintaining a balance between meeting the identified needs of the community and our own limited capacity. Being here makes the needs so real, so visceral – think of how much just a little bit of money for this could improve this situation, could make so and so’s life so much better, and all for just a little bit of money, why not, why shouldn’t we commit? How hard could it be?

Alas, being here makes us forget about all our other real-life obligations in Canada, such as school, jobs, family and friends, and makes all the planning and organization that comes with commitments to overseas projects less obvious. All the gritty details of organising students, finding sponsors, co-ordinating the deposits of money, are softened by the emotional experience of being near people that could benefit from our projects.

The danger is commitment to a project that we do not have the time to properly manage and monitor in Canada, and the risk is that consequently, the money is not as well-spent as we originally intended. To avoid this, it’s necessary to recognize our own limits and capacities.

Still, our recognition of our limits and capacities is still only an estimate. On which side is it better to err? To be too conservative means that we are not serving our communities as well as we could be. To be too liberal means that we overextend ourselves and can’t do things as well as we want. There is a time for both. What path should SEED follow?

We are in a stage of transition. We have students starting professional schools this year, students graduating from professional schools to enter the “real world”, and a great transition of roles, responsibilities and tasks ahead of us. There is a lot of work to be done internally, much more than work in Zambia or Kenya, in my opinion. This is a year of great change, and the challenge for SEED is to make that internal transition without compromising our potential.

Mary Yang
Overseas Intern – Zambia