Adventure Learning Grant

Today I submitted my Adventure Learning Grant proposal.

As you may recall, way back in August I finished my first proposal draft. It has certainly been through quite a few changes since then, but I'm pretty happy with my final product. While I have, at times, become quite exasperated with my ongoing revisions to the grant, it has been an amazing process. I have been able to think through, in great depth, what kind of an experience I would like to have, explore contingencies, and more generally think about what I want to learn and why.

The why is important to Fairhaven (and life), and the process of not only working on my grant, but also my concentration, has helped me think about why I want to study democracy and rationalize those reasons. I am coming out of both processes with a better understanding of myself and the things that drive me.

The help I have received along the way – from professors and fellow students – has been invaluable in these processes. Even if I don’t get the grant – and there’s quite the competition, with subjects ranging from weaving in Latin America to fishing in the Balkans – the process has been completely worth it.

I realize I avoided what my proposal was about in the above, so I’ve pasted my abstract below (in case anyone is interested):

People power: Grassroots democracy and Ubuntu
I want to go to South Africa to become involved with grassroots democracy movements and gain a holistic understanding of why its democratic transition was successful. I want to explore the philosophical concept of Ubuntu – an existence premised on community - as it relates to these movements, the democratic transition, and to the larger theoretical foundation of South African democracy. I want to blog about my experiences and use them as a way not only to educate myself, but also others when I return to Fairhaven.