Syllabus: Cambodia

Community and Childhood Development: Cambodia 2008

Global Partnerships for Activism and Cross-cultural Training

Community and Childhood Development
03 August – 30 August 2008
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Global PACT                                                           www.globalpact.org
Center for Children’s Happiness            http://www.cchcambodia.org/

Political Science 790:369 and 790:389
Professor D. Michael Shafer, Rutgers University mshafer@rci.rutgers.edu
Professor Denise Horn, Northeastern University        d.horn@neu.edu

Senior Trainer Carole Ketnourath           carole.ketnourath@gmail.com

Trainer Sopheak Nam                                   namsopheak@yahoo.com
Trainer Chetra Soun                                      chetra_soun@yahoo.com
Trainer Yasmine Habash                                         habash.y@neu.edu

Politics – small “p” – is the art of living together. From the original Greek philosophers’ efforts to define the proper form of the republic to contemporary efforts to frame constitutions for newly independent states, the problem is the same: how to establish rules by which people can interact in reasonably predictable ways that permit them to lead safe, productive and fulfilling lives.

This course teaches the knowledge, skills, and attitudes citizens need to create thriving communities. Who are citizens? Citizens are individuals who are active in the lives of their communities. What distinguishes the “citizens” from the “residents” of a community? Residents are merely born into a community. Citizens are not born; they are educated, just as successful political communities are not “born” but are created through hard, sustained effort on the part of their citizens. What does it take to be good citizens? They must understand the issues that confront their communities; they must know how to organize and act to resolve those issues; and perhaps most important, they must believe that they can and indeed they must act because it is their personal responsibility to do so. This course is about how citizens – you – can mobilize and act for social change.

Here is where you come in. For the next four weeks you will be working in a large team and in small working teams with your local counterparts to learn how to identify, break down, and solve community problems and to engage young people in the process, thus building community. Learning to be an organizer and learning to function in an entirely different cultural setting is going to wear you out. It is going to be worth it.

Pre-departure assignments
Please complete these assignments before arriving in country.

1. Read and watch the following.
   

Books  To be announced.

Videos  To be announced

2. Write your expectations essay.
   

Write a two-page (double-spaced typed, single-spaced handwritten) essay on what you expect to learn and experience. Incorporate previous knowledge, as well as the readings and films. Write about your expectations of the other participants and about how you expect to be perceived and received. Feel free to include your expectations of what will be the most difficult and rewarding parts of this experience. Most important, write about the expectations and goals you have for yourself. NB: This is due on August 16, the first day of the training! Why not write it before you leave?

3. Prepare for your personal interview project.
   

Pack personal and family photographs, documents, and mementos to share with your personal interview project partner from another country. Do not bring anything valuable or irreplaceable! Bring photocopies of family photographs and documents rather than the originals, and leave family heirlooms at home.

Materials

Required pre-departure articles, books, and videos will not be provided. They are easily accessible through your university library, bookstores, or online retailers.

The Global PACT manual will be provided in country on the first day of training.

Attendance

In Global PACT, you are not a student; you are a citizen of a community that cannot function without your active participation. Your attendance and punctuality is as much a reflection of yourselves as individuals and team members as a component of your grade. For this reason, team members who arrive more than 15 minutes late for workshop sessions will be assigned special “group service” duties such as packing up supplies or carrying materials. You will of course receive zero credit for any assignments due on days you are not present, and you will not pass the course if you miss 3 or more classes. Arriving more than an hour late will be considered equivalent to missing a day, and late time will accrue in 15 minute intervals adding up to day(s) absent (that is, four equal one day).

Expectations

This will be an intense course in which we will make high demands on you. First, of course, like you, your Cambodia and quite possibly your Japanese classmates will have never before collaborated with distant foreigners in truly multicultural teams. As you know from personal experience, group work is always hard. It is much harder across cultural barriers. We will be here to help, but we need you to be self-aware and ready to confront and work through your own, natural culture shock frustrations. Second, we need you to be aware that others, too, suffer the same culture shock frustrations that you do and that what you take as dumb, inefficient or offensive may simply be a reflection of their discomfort. We all need to cut each other some slack. Finally, as a course, this course will be different. It requires constant, graded group work and active participation, often in the form of required public presentations. It also requires that you actually practice the skills and knowledge you have acquired in a live setting. Because we all have to learn by doing in public, we – not just you – we are all going to look like idiots at some point. You need to be brave enough to try everything, and you need to be supportive of others, even when they look really, really stupid.

This is a course about activism and advocacy, about grassroots organizing. Activists agitate, advocates advocate and organizers organize. So that is what you are going to do, since there is no way to learn how to do any of these things except by doing them. And since the only real test of anything is the real thing, your final test will be the real thing: an actual press conference for the national and regional press. (When you stand in front of that real TV camera, you will be very thankful for all of the times we stuck microphones and camcorders in your face and demanded a perfect, off-the-cuff 15 second sound bites!)

Grades

our grade will be divided into two parts: 60% will consist of academic work and writing, and 40% will consist of Global PACT practical writing and presentations to prepare you to be an engaged citizen.

Culture, History, and Politics Assignments (60%, individual grade):

·         Expectations essay (10%)

Write a two-page (double-spaced typed, single-spaced handwritten) essay on what you expect to learn and experience. Incorporate previous knowledge, as well as the readings and films. Write about your expectations of the other participants and about how you expect to be perceived and received. Feel free to include your expectations of what will be the most difficult and rewarding parts of this experience. Most important, write about the expectations and goals you have for yourself.

·         Expert response I (10%)

Write a two-page (double-spaced typed, single-spaced handwritten) essay about the first speaker(s) or NGO visit. This essay should not be a mere report on what the speaker said. Rather, it should be a reflection on how the speaker’s organization or experiences relate to or illustrate the principles and techniques of organizing that you are learning.

·         Expert response II (10%)

Write a two-page (double-spaced typed, single-spaced handwritten) essay about the second speaker(s) or NGO visit. This essay should not be a mere report on what the speaker said. Rather, it should be a reflection on how the speaker’s organization or experiences relate to or illustrate the principles and techniques of organizing that you are learning.

·         Personal interview project (30%)

This is a cultural and historical personal interview project. During the training, you will have many opportunities to get to know the other participants. This assignment is meant to push you to go further. You will be expected to interview another member of your team from another country, whether Cambodia or Japan. The starting point of the project will be an exchange of personal and family stories and histories. Where do your families come from and how did they get to where they are? What are the big events in family history? Who are the great characters? In the process of collecting each other’s family stories, you will also seek out information about the history, politics and culture of each country that has shaped your lives and families. Consider, too, how our countries have interacted over the years – Japan, Indochina/Cambodia and the United States have a long, complex and fateful history in which each has played critical and often terrible roles in the lives of the other two. How are these larger historical narratives played out in the lives of individual families?

Relate your partner’s story and family story to a broader historical context through a presentation and share your partner’s family photographs, documents, and mementos alongside the posted class timeline. Your presentation of your partner’s personal history and of facts should be informed by your deeper understanding of complicated and interwoven issues that confront all of our countries. Your completed Personal Interview Project is due on June 8. To keep you on schedule, however, you must meet the following milestones – or lose 1% with every missed deadline:

·         Friday, May 18 – Turn in written questions for a preliminary interview.

·         Wednesday, May 23 – Turn in notes of your preliminary interviews and new written questions for a follow-up interview.

·         Monday, May 28 – Turn in notes from follow-up interview; show trainer collected family photographs, documents, and mementos; begin writing major personal and family dates and events on the class timeline that will run around the walls of our training room.

·         Friday, June 8 –Relate your partner’s story and family story to a broader historical context through a presentation and share your partner’s family photographs, documents, and mementos alongside the posted class timeline. Your presentation of your partner’s personal history and of facts should be informed by your deeper understanding of complicated and interwoven issues that confront our countries.

 Global PACT Assignments (40%, group grade):

Your grade for this section will depend on the work you complete with your group, all of which will be impossible without effective and committed collaboration among all members of your team. Everything you need to know about these assignments will be discussed during our workshop sessions. The Global PACT manual will guide you through the entire process. The following constitute the assignments that you will complete with your group. You will be given either oral feed-back (for presentations) or written feedback (for hard copy assignments). At the time of the final press conference at the end of the program, each group will submit a packet that contains both the original of all hard copy assignments and revised versions that reflect the feedback that the group received. All group members receive the same grade.

·         Thursday, May 17 – Presentation I: Issue breakdown

·         Friday, May 18 – Presentation II: Action research plan

·         Tuesday, May 22 – Presentation III: Project ideas

·         Wednesday, May 23 – Presentation IV: Resources and networks

·         Monday, May 28 – Budget

·         Tuesday, May 29 – Presentation V: Mission, vision, goals; Project goals, mission and vision

·         Wednesday, May 30 – Talking points

·         Sunday, June 10 – Press release

·         Monday, June 11 – Press conference, press packet, final Global PACT group packet

Assignments and Presentations

Assignments are due at the start of the indicated training day, that is, for each day we are in class.

Presentations will be conducted on the indicated training day. There will be allotted time in class to prepare, but additional work outside class may be necessary depending on your group. You should expect to work several hours a night, several nights per week.

Schedule

 Sunday Aug. 5

            Welcome dinner

 Monday Aug. 6

Training 1:

Introductions
Goals and ground rules
Issue brainstorm

Due today: Expectations essay (individual grade)

Tuesday Aug. 7

Training 2:

Issue breakdown
Presentation I: issue breakdown

Due today: Presentation I: Issue breakdown (group grade)

Wednesday Aug. 8

Training 3:

Group contracts
Action research
Presentation II: action research plan

Due today: Personal interview project: Preliminary interview questions (individual)
Presentation II: Action research plan (group grade)

Thursday Aug. 9

Training 4:

Action research (network expansion, meeting preparation)

Due today:        None

Friday Aug. 10

Training 5:

Action research
Presentation III: project ideas
Define projects             

Due today: Presentation III: Project ideas (group grade)

Saturday Aug. 11

Local excursion I

Sunday Aug. 12

FREE DAY

Monday Aug. 13

Training 6:

Resources and networks
Presentation IV: resources and networks                       

Due today:

Expert response I (individual grade)
Personal interview project: Preliminary interview notes (individual grade)
Personal interview project: Follow-up interview questions (individual grade)
Presentation IV: Resources and networking (group grade)

Tuesday Aug. 14

Training 7:

Action research

Due today:        None

Wednesday Aug. 15

Training 8:

Budgets
Teams and teamwork

Due today:        None

Thursday Aug. 16

Training 9:

Project goals    

Due today: Expert response I (individual grade)
Personal interview project: Follow-up interview notes (individual grade)

Friday Aug. 17

Training 10:

Mission and vision
Presentation V: mission, vision and goals
Metrics

Due today: Presentation V: Mission, vision and goals (group grade)
Mission, vision, and goals (group grade)

Saturday Aug. 18

Local excursion II

Sunday Aug. 19

FREE DAY

Monday Aug. 20

Project 1: On project days, each group will work on organizing its project. What it does and where it goes will depend on the state of the project. Trainers will be available to advise and local transportation will be available for research and other trips.

Tuesday Aug. 21

Project 2:

Wednesday Aug. 22

Project 3:

Thursday Aug. 23

Training 11:

Talking points
Audiences
Project preparation

Due today: Expert response II (individual grade)
Talking points (group grade)

Friday Aug. 24

Training 12:

Public relations                         

Due today: Personal interview project: Presentation (individual grade)

Saturday Aug. 25

            Angkor Wat

Sunday Aug. 26

            Angkor Wat

Monday Aug. 27

Training 13:

Press releases
Press conferences        

Due today: None

Tuesday Aug. 28

Training 14:

Sound bites

Press conferences

Due today: Press release (group grade)

Wednesday Aug. 29

Final Exam! REAL press conference

Due today: Final group packet (group grade)

Thursday Aug. 30

Depart Cambodia