It is difficult to believe that we have already accumulated five weeks at UD. This Monday, 21July, marks the entrance into our last week at the University of Delaware. The day started a little bit late due to the long weekend we had, which ranged from an African diaspora reception on Saturday to our internal cultural cooking event on Sunday.
In the morning session, we formulated two questions as a group for the Presidential town hall meeting next week in Washington, DC. The two agreed-upon questions for President Obama were around race issues in America, particularly the lessons the US should teach Africa, and peace and security, two challenges to sustainable development in most of our countries.
Additionally, as a group, we reviewed and offered feedback on the Washington Fellowship program, focusing on what should be improved for the next UD YALI generation. Most of the feedback in this regard was on how better academic sessions could be provided. To name a few ideas, it was suggested that civic leadership is broad, and it needs to be broken down in small groups according to the fellows’ areas of interest rather than having all the fellows undergo numerous general lectures together. Although interesting, some of the academic sessions were more relevant than others. Again, it was wished that Friday site visits be divided according to fellows’ areas of expertise as well. Finally, we suggested that, if academic sessions were workshops, this would help the learning process. So many other great points were raised and noted. In the conclusion to this discussion, it was mentioned that fellows also needed an opportunity to hear from the organizing team on how well they were perceived as participants.
Afterwards, we were again granted the privilege to meet a US politician, namely John Carney, the US Congressional representative to Delaware. Representative Carney took a while to explain how he got involved in politics, what were some of his challenges and achievements, the way he engages youth in his developmental activities, etc. He also raised an important issue about the economy of Africa decreasing because of its resources being taken outside the continent for processing. Given the fact that the meeting was short and not all of us got to ask questions, the concern was how possible and applicable this is since the majority of the developed world’s utilized natural resources come from Africa. The following questions were on our minds: Why is it now that the USA is thinking of the self-reliance of Africa? Wouldn’t one think it is a tactic to gain the support of African leaders against China, a country that seems to be dominating the continent in our day?
Approaching the end of our stay at UD, we look forward to a challenging but productive week. Hope we end as well as we started!