Before the conclusion of the spring semester we asked some current SIPA students the following question: What is your number one tip for an incoming student? Click here to view a 57 second video that features answers from four of our students.
Author Archive for Matt Clemons – Page 80
We still have lots of photos to post in the coming weeks so stay tuned in for more. If you have sent pictures rest assured we will get to them.
The first picture is from Siliang Zhou, an incoming MIA student.
The picture was taken in Manchester, Vermont when I was spending July 4th there.
I did a hawk-walk with my guide in the mountain to catch some rabbits. The bird standing on my arm was the hunter. It weighed only 4.5 pounds and yet was able to dive at a speed of 60 feet per second! My guide also told me if a hawk can read, it has no problem reading newspaper from 100 yards away. But the thing that fascinates me about the animal is that its nature is WILD no matter how long it’s been caged. It never becomes attached to human like cats and dogs. That’s why they never set them out without starving them first.
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The next three photos come from Stig Arild Pettersen, a 26 year-old incoming MIA student from Norway.
From June to October 2007 I worked as a sailing coach for youth in Burma (Myanmar) in South East Asia. Living and working in Yangon, the largest city in this country under military authoritarian rule, was an experience I will never forget.
Inle Lake in Burma’s Shan State is a real Water World. I was enormously impressed by the balance shown by local kids and fishermen alike, handling their fishing nets in the gusty winds while standing on only one leg at the bow of their narrow canoes.
Hiking in the Shan hills above Inle Lake, I came across these novise monks belonging to the Pa-O people. As my Pa-O is nothing to brag about, communication was at a low until I gave them my SLR to play with.
My friend Colm from England and I try to communicate with local Burmese at a cafe in Pakokku, a small town in the central part of the country. We were joking around and singing songs to each other in our mother tongues. We had gone to Pakokku after rumours had come out about monks marching in the streets, protesting against the brutal treatment of monks by the local police. Moments later, we found ourselves being probably the first Westerners to observe what would turn out to be the largest international media happening of that fall, the unrest and government crackdown that left tens of innocent Burmese dead. Trying to take photos of the monks, we where rapidly stopped by plain clothed security personnel and escorted on the ferry out of town.
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The final photo for today is from Libby Abbott, an incoming MIA student.
Rupandehi District, Nepal
A woman from the terai (plains) region of southern Nepal balances a copper water jug on her hip. This kind of regular, heavy work performed by women contributes to high rates of uterine prolapse, a reproductive health morbidity that can cause a lifetime of physical and social suffering.
I like to be able to provide information to prospective SIPA students concerning the work of our alumni. The following is an article on a project developed by 2006 SIPA alumna, Prathima Rodrigues. The project was actually developed while she was a student at SIPA.
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“I want to be an accountant when I grow up,” says an eager Samir, as he expertly calculates the amount of profit his team has made selling hats as part of a business simulation activity. Samir is a grade eight student at St. Francis School, Bangalore, India and is part of a group of 25 other kids participating in a pilot workshop for Skills for Kids (SFK).
Skills for Kids (SFK) is a program that teaches the concepts of entrepreneurship to young children – concepts that are useful in everyday lives but are often not taught in schools as part of formal curricula. The SFK curriculum simplifies these concepts and brings them to the classroom through fun, learner-centric and experiential activities.
SFK was founded by SIPA 2006 alumna, Prathima Rodrigues while still at graduate school. During this time, Prathima was awarded the Sasakawa Young Leadership Fellowship Fund (SYLFF) from the Tokyo Foundation which laid the foundation for her initiative. “Receiving the SYLFF fellowship was a great honour for me”, says Prathima. “The Tokyo Foundation encourages fellows to work in international development and start their own initiatives. It was a good opportunity for me to leverage the SYLFF network and the fellowship has certainly helped me create and scale-up my entrepreneurial venture. Also, SIPA gave me a very good foundation for my work. I was able to constantly apply what I learned in the classroom.”
Prathima says that formal education in most schools in India for example, does not equip children with relevant skills. Though the demand for these skills is rising, both in tertiary education institutes and in the job market, preparation of youth for work and life is inadequate. Increasingly, firms want to hire young people who not only posses sound technical skills but have good communication and teamwork skills and who are creative and dynamic in the workplace – traits that are essential in today’s globalized economy.
From a small student led initiative, Skills for Kids has achieved considerable scale in the last few years. Prathima now leads a team of three – Badamjav Batsukh (SYLFF Fellow and Officer, Ministry of Education and Science, Mongolia), Sapruddin Perwira (SYLFF Fellow and Director, Project Hope, Indonesia) and Sunil Mathew (Senior Software Engineer, OPNET Technologies, Maryland, USA). “I met most of my team through the SYLFF network. Each team member brings his/her distinct expertise to the table and we are very open to each other’s suggestions”, says Prathima, “all of us are very motivated and do this apart from our regular jobs. We manage to coordinate quite well though we live in four different cities across the globe.”
“Activities that focus on life skills and financial skills, enable children to be more productive in the classroom, more self-sufficient and more inclined to contribute to their community’s social and economic development”, says Prathima. “Significant anecdotal and empirical evidence show that if encouraged at an early age, a targeted curriculum, pedagogy and faculty can catalyze the development of this entrepreneurial mindset among young adults. Teaching and learning in developing economies is based on a system of rote learning that in several cases, is alone not sufficient to actively encourage students to think on their own and take on responsibilities; traits that form the core of developing an entrepreneurial mindset.”
Skills for Kids follows an integrated model of entrepreneurial and life skills development, that equips secondary school
students with a set of marketable skills (See Figure 4). The 18 hours of the Skills for Kids curriculum encompass 8 modules; each module consists of a set of activities that develops both cognitive skills (such as in economics and personal finance) and non-cognitive skills (teamwork and communication) in young people. “The unique aspect of the Skills for Kids model is that it is based on two parallel streams of learning – building tangible skills in economics or finance and developing behavioral traits such as decision-making, positive self-esteem and good communication.” says Badamjav. “Each activity follows this bi-channel approach and ensures that students grasp the core theme of each lesson but at the same time develop these traits.”
The first Skills for Kids pilot was coordinated by Badamjav and implemented in Mongolia followed by a second pilot in India, coordinated by Sunil. “Many donors and academics come to the camp, to visit the children and on supervision missions. But this is the first time that students are learning a set of extremely useful skills.” says Ms. B. Danya, a senior teacher at the summer camp in Mongolia, where the pilot was held. “I want our teachers to be trained on how to teach this so that many more children can benefit from this program”.
The team believes that the children are an integral part of the program and the kids are constantly encouraged to express provide feedback on what they liked or disliked. Fifteen-year-old Tuya from Mongolia says, “The activities were interesting. I learnt a lot about business skills and I had a lot of fun. I do not get to do all this at school”. “We were very pleased, with the ingenuity of the students”, says Prathima, “They were able to understand and apply many of these complex concepts. They are so incredibly creative; there is a lot we can learn from them.”
Prathima and her team represent a new breed of young change makers – individuals who, rather than only talk of what’s wrong, get together and try to make change happen. “We are extremely proud of what we have achieved”, says Prathima, “there is much that young people can do with a little creativity and a lot of hard work. I hope that our work serves as an example to other young people in various parts of the globe and motivates them to make a difference in their communities.”
Prathima Rodrigues is a SIPA 2006 graduate (MIA, EPD). At present, she works with the World Bank in the Europe and Central Asia region. Her previous work experience includes projects with UNICEF, U NIDO and the Development Gateway Foundation. Prathima also 
serves as an advisor to Make a Difference (http://www.makeadiff.in/) and served as a judge for the 2009 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC). She has an engineering degree from KREC, Surathkal, India and a master degree from Drexel University, Philadelphia. Prathima is from Mangalore, India and presently resides in Washington D. C. Prathima was recently awarded a Youth Innovation Fund (YIF) grant from the World Bank to pilot Skills for Kids in Kosovo. She can be reached at pr2141 [at] columbia.edu.
The first three pictures today come from Eileen Liu, an incoming MIA student.
The first was taken in Banff, Alberta, Canada. This picture captures the two things that the word “Alberta” brings most often to my mind: the beautiful Rocky Mountains and the province’s wealth of oil.
The second picture was taken in a rural village in Kenya. Most pictures of children in Africa show them with somber faces staring with melancholy eyes into the camera. But this pictures shows that laughter, smiles and enthusiastic thumbs-ups are also a very large part of their lives.
The last was taken in Tokyo, Japan. Although cherry blossoms are an annual phenomenon in Japan, the locals still flock to these public parks every year to admire the beautiful flowers.
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The next three photos come from N. E. “Rudy” Rickner, an admitted MIA student.
July, 2002. Chuuk Islands, FSM. While most of the military was busy elsewhere in 2002, my squadron was assigned to “reach out” to the remote populations of the south Pacific. We landed on about 20 remote islands. This group of islands is Chuuk (formerly known as Truk) which is part of the Fed. States of Micronesia.
July, 2002. Chuuk Islands, FSM. Mostly impoverished and isolated from technology, these children from Chuuk enthusiastically welcomed us. I still can’t quite grasp the contrast of worlds that collided when we arrived, yet we enjoyed warm welcomes and well wishes from everyone we encountered.
February, 2006. Ramadi, Iraq. I took this picture on a foot patrol through the central market area of Ramadi, Iraq. I was unaware of the contrast I captured when I snapped it. While the young Marine is focused and aware of the danger he is in, the old man sits calmly smoking his cigarette. He has an expression that conveys a tired understanding. Unlike the Marine with the weapon, he doesn’t feel threatened at all.
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The next two photos come from Massimiliano Costa, incoming MIA student.
The first photo was taken in Baku, Azerbaijan. This photo was taken during the summer of 2008 in an oil field located a few miles from the city of Baku, on the Caspian Sea. This was the only blade of grass in that wasteland.
The second photo was taken in Xinjiang, China. In the desert between China and Kazakhstan, this peaceful lake lies in a valley still inhabited by nomadic people.
If you are an incoming or current SIPA student living in Mexico City you have the opportunity to get together with other students from SIPA prior to the start of the fall semester. I recently received an inquiry from an incoming student living in Mexico City, Celcilia, who has an interest in getting together with other students in the area. The following is her message:
If you are from Mexico City and will be attending Columbia next fall this message is for you.
My name is Cecilia and I will be attending SIPA. I am planning a reunion for future Columbia Mexican Students in Mexico City before we all leave to NYC in order to get to know each other and to exchange experiences about different issues such as housing, travel, phone company etc.
If you are interested, please send an email to cf2389 [at] columbia.edu
Thanks!
Cecilia
If other students wish to have similar messages posted to the blog for public consumption please send a message to the Office of Admissions at [email protected].
"The most global public policy school, where an international community of students and faculty address world challenges."
—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs
