Last Blog Post. Maybe.

I took screen shots of all my emails with my judges and mentors. I heard back from all my judges. I have all the forms and papers and documents; I just need to organize it all. Everything is due tomorrow.

It was a good thesis. Thank you to everyone, especially Mr.Correa, for making this all possible. I could not have done it without you. 

Abstract

I finished my abstract today. I need to get Correa's signature today for the hard copy cover sheet.

I also need to explain to him the issue of my product. Alrighty! Bye. 

Process Records and Paper

I am almost done with my process paper. I am building off my midterm and the after effects of my presentation. I included some questions I was asked during my presentation and some responses to my survey questions. I mention my product and how I come to this point. I start from the very beginning of the year and work my way up. My mid-term paper helped a lot with this. It reminded me of what I was trying to do without having to scroll all the way through my blog posts.

I am also taking screen shots of my emails and communications and taking pictures of my hard copy surveys. I need to also add in the photos from my presentation since it was off campus on a weekend. My product will also be on the same memory chip. They are clips of the debate.

That's what I am currently doing. I am not looking forward to organizing all these documents. 

EdGE Week 12

This was the last week of the course.

It summarized safety, organization, volunteerism, and pre-departure advice! I can say that this was honestly a very helpful course. Before the course, I was not aware of how much goes on in abroad volunteering. This course gave me an unbiased view of social problems that would be hard to comprehend if I jumped straight into volunteering abroad without all this prior knowledge. I also completed a survey judging the course. The survey was well put together. It asked a lot of questions about the administration, the team, the mentors, the different subjects in the course, the concentrations, and the resources and links and videos within each week during the course. At the end of the week, there was celebratory music and a tutorial on how to blog through the Omprakash Dashboard.

I have to regularly keep up with my mentor, who is Barclay Martin. She is so sweet and funny. I have Skype called and emailed her a couple of times. I am currently asking her for help on coming up with ideas for my Capstone Project. I have to turn this in 8 weeks within coming back. I want to have a firm idea of what i want to create before I leave for my trip. Also, I have to book my flight ticket from Delhi to Varanasi.

I just completed the whole week today. It was a fairly short lesson and wrap-up.

EdGE Week 11

Exercise: ROP (Record of Perspectives) Practice

This week may require you to step out of your comfort zone, but you each have voluntarily chosen to go work in a foreign country for a few months, so now's a great time to practice stepping out of that comfort zone!

1.Just like last week, pick a venue where other people are hanging out -- it could be a coffee shop, the library, the cafeteria, etc. -- and take some time to record fieldnotes about what you observe.

2. Then solicit the perspective of at least one other person at your chosen venue. For example, if you're at a coffee shop choose somebody or a group of people (maybe other customers or baristas or anybody of interest), approach them, and ask if he/she/they will answer a few questions for a class project. You don't need to conduct an interview. 2 or 3 questions will suffice. In a coffee shop you might ask: "what does 'fair trade coffee' mean to you?" or "would you rather have a delicious cup of non-fair trade coffee or a bland/mediocre cup of fair trade coffee, and why?" In a cafeteria you might ask diners, "how much food waste do you think is generated in this cafeteria each day?" Then you might ask a cafeteria worker, "what do you think of all the foodwaste that's thrown away each day?" In a library you might ask, "do you feel like the library provides you with a sense of community?" or "if the library caught on fire and you could save books from only one genre, what would you save and why?" Your questions do not need to be of grave importance, but try to ask questions that could directly or indirectly shed light on a relevant issue, or a sense of community, or a sense of power.

3. Post your mini ROP into the forum!

My post: 

I went to the library cafe this weekend. I asked people why they hang out with the people they hang out with. 

First person 

(name: Stephanie): I hang out with Lexie because she's awesome. Just kidding. Just kidding again. She is a good influence. She drags me here and suggests books for me to read. She has probably read everything in the sci-fi section of this library. 

Lexie: She's my neighbor and the library is close by. I just want to utilize all my resources. If not here, we would be doing something else to waste our time. This is a better waste of time.

Next table:

(first person): I come here with my boyfriend. My best friend's boyfriend is my boyfriend's best friend. It's a great group overall. We don't actually go to the library. We come through the cafe entrance and just hang out. It is a good place to catch up.

(first person's boyfriend): I like her because she is usually right. She told me not to wish for coconut pie on the ride here. When I came here, they didn't have any coconut pie made. I was less disappointed. 

*whole group laughs*

(other friend's boyfriend): I like this group. I think I met her (his girlfriend) here as well. We knew each other from before, but we didn't like each other like that. She's a cool person, though. She has watched all of Star Trek and Star Wars. That's my type of girl.

Last group of people:

Serena: I just met her. She was alone and the tables were all clean. I go to North Lake College. It's the community college nearby. The cafe inside gets really crowded, so I come here. 

The other girl: I come here for the same reason. The kids inside the library are really loud. I check out my books and come here. I just wish the wi-fi was better. I think it is better inside. 

Serena: I have to go. Thanks for letting me sit here (to the other girl).

That was it. The library and cafe were about to close in half an hour anyways. I had to leave. It was fun. I wish I had more time to observe people coming in and walking out and talk to more people. Maybe, next time. 

Presentation Continued

I am working on my process paper right now.

My judges did not have time to complete the scoring sheets. I emailed them, and they have agreed to return the sheets and judge profile forms back to me by April 24th.

I took 10.4 GB worth of videos of my presentation. I have to figure out a way to store 10.4 GB somewhere. I am working on editing the video on "Movie Maker" so I can show it to Mr.Correa and give it to IANT to put on their Facebook page and website. I might create a "Sheroes and Heroes Unite" Facebook page as well before the end of this school year. IANT took some photos of me speaking and the debate. I can send those photos in for the time being.

I also sent a survey to an IANT board member. They have agreed to include it for free in their weekly newsletters. I want to know, honestly, how much my product helped or will help my ultimate goal: address gender disparity and work towards gender equality everywhere. I want to know where to improve and what to keep the same.

Survey

(Y/N)

1. Was this empowering?

2. Does this type of forum (Sheroes and Heroes Unite) help?

3. Can it make a difference?

4. Is the radio idea a good one?

5. Should we do these types of debates again?

6. Will you recommend others to come to this event next time it happens?

7. Is this what you expected?

8. Are you interested in being part of an online forum? 

Free Response

Speak Again (email me at rubyopandey@gmail.com or message me on Facebook “Ruby Pandey” or email any one of these lovely IANT women and they can forward the email to me)

What did you learn today?

What should be changed? (Removed or added)

How much should the youth be involved? 

Overview of my Presentation

Presentation time: around 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

About 40 people attended

So I started my presentation with a slideshow and read off of my script. I talked about my process, my research, and my project.

I started off with a little introduction of myself, my school, and what a thesis is.

• I explained how thesis is a year long process where I have to research something I am interested in and then present a product or proposal or research at the end of the year. I notified the audience that they were going to take part in my thesis product right after my presentation. 

Then I talked about my process throughout the year and how I came up with what I did (a forum called "Sheroes and Heroes Unite.")

• I explained why I chose women empowerment and gender equality. To me, it was a big deal because I thought of it as a root issue. If genders cannot get along, we cannot expect other differences to not make us upset (races, ethnicity, religions). Also, gender is a very large audience. A problem that affects almost everyone means that the issue needs to be addressed. I made it my job to address it over the year. 
• I explained how, in the beginning, my idea was to create a self defense workshop for women. I was thinking more along the line of "safety" than "empowerment" and "gender equality." However, I realized that I did not want to support feminism as much as I wanted to support women empowerment because there is a difference. 
• So, I did some research and realized where these disparities occur the most. They happen mostly in the workplace and in homes and workplaces of citizens in LDCs. Since I wanted to focus abroad, I had to know what my role was in abroad aid. Therefore, I took a course called "EdGE" by Omprakash. It is a 12 week course that explains my role as an abroad volunteer. Most of my research comes from this course. It helped me get the idea for my project. It taught me to pay attention to who I was helping more than my ideas to help. That made me realize that this isn't only my problem to fix. It is everyone's. Therefore, everyone, especially the inferior women, should have a say in the solution to "gender disparity." EdGE also gave me a global perception. It gave me facts and numbers to corroborate what I said to my audience. 
• EdGE comes with its own mentors. At the end of every week, we are supposed to write in a forum about what we learned or what we wanted to add or share. All the volunteers write and express. This gave me the idea to make my own live forum called "Sheroes and Heroes Unite," which would focus on gender issues. This forum helps to close the gap without labeling. It is to bring people from all walks to express their ideas, get inspiration, and search for a solution (long-term or short-term) 
• For every problem, I made 4 steps that can be summarized with the acronym: RISE.
• R- realize, I- identify, S- speak, E - execute
• Then, I let the audience know that "today is about knowing your voice counts and connecting the women here and bringing more next time."

Then, I explained RISE more in depth:

• Before starting the actual live forum, I want you [audience] to know why we need to have a forum about it in the first place.
• R-realize. I explained how we will never have any problems if we just simply believe they do not exist. Most of us have ignored problems. So, today is about letting them in. Today is about connecting with the problem and making it yours to solve. Usually, we do not acknowledge a problem because we cannot relate with it or it's too far off. I did simple exercises with the audience to teach them how to make a matter personal. I used "Jyoti Singh Pandey" as my example. I have done lots of research on her. She was the victim of Delhi's 2012 gang rape case. To this day, she has not gotten justice because rapes still happen, the court hasn't settled, and women are still seen inferior to men (in this case, we're talking about India).
• I explained how "Jyoti" is my friend's mom's name. "Singh" is my best friend's last name. "Pandey" is my last name. Something that happened 3 years ago, many kilometers away, has now become my issue because I made it so. So, the "realize" step is to acknowledge the problem, make the matter personal, then make it arguable. 
• I- identify. Once, a person has made it their personal problem, they will have to dive deeper and identify where the problem actually is. They have to look at facts: do their research. "Why do women need to be empowered in the first place?" We need to be empowered because we feel and we are "less than." I had a couple of slides that gave credit to this fact. The first image was the "global gender gap" that ranked countries from the least gap to the most gap. India was 105 on that list. The list had 135 countries. This explains how not only do the genders differ from one another, but different women from different countries may have more or less than women from other countries. So, identify is where we take all of this into account. The next two images showed how the gender gap is big enough to laugh at. The first image explains how the wage gap is about 23% between men and women. Although, there are some legitimate reasons behind this percentage, there are some other reasons that only prove that a disparity does exist. The last image is a satiric remark about how girls cannot do math. So now, we have some facts to back up our reasoning to stand up and fight in the first place.
• We made it our problem, we have the facts that prove that it may be a problem for more than one person (in this case, millions of people) and that it is an actual, factual problem, so, now it is time to share it and speak with other people who have gone through "R" and "I" themselves.
•  S-speak is the most important aspect. This is where the forum begins. The first two steps can be done individually. However, this step's vital aspect is people, especially like minded people, preferably who have gone through "R" and "I" of RISE. 
• Nothing can be done about big problems, if people who want to do something about it just keep it to themselves. How come gender (women) is such a large population, yet cannot do much about their inferior status even after so many years? It is because no one speaks. So, this part of RISE is almost the most important. You may have to literally rise and give yourself the courage to speak. No one can understand a women's problem and gender disparity more than the people who are victims of the crime. I cannot be the only one solving this because I do not know what it is like to be on the other side of the spectrum. Thus, we need the victims, all different people, plus more who are not victims, to share their sides, stories, and ideas. Just speaking about an idea proves that it was worth enough to talk about. It gets gears turning and it spreads the message. 

From here, I transition to the live demonstration of my product: Sheroes and Heroes Unite. It is a forum where people get a chance to do the "S" part of RISE. Technically, the acronym "RISE" is also part of the product. RISE is a wholesome approach to a problem like gender disparity, women empowerment, etc. However, "Speak" is the more visual part of the product. I have video recorded my presentation and as much of the "speak" portion that I could.