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Study sustainable international development in areas of your major interests in Senegal and engage with development professionals, Senegalese student partners and rural villagers belonging to the Senegal Ecovillage Network. Learn about current challenges and help with much-needed projects on the ground with experts from the Ministry of Tourism, the National Commission on Sustainable Development, UNESCO, USAID, World Vision and the NGO CRESP.
Explore theories in Service Learning (Participatory Action Research and Appreciative Inquiry methods) and get hands-on experience in ecological technologies and community dynamics in several rural villages. As members of Senegal's ecovillage network, these villages are working to improve their quality of life while preserving their ancient culture, restoring their environments and improving their economies and social services.
Check out the student weblogs »
Browse the photo gallery »
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Become a part of community life, in colourful Muslim and nature spirit celebrations, attending concerts, taking dance or drum lessons, playing soccer at sunset, and working with CB0s (community-based organizations such as village development committees) in local health, clean-up and tree-planting campaigns. |
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Explore our own development NGO, CRESP, Senegal, an affiliate of CRESP, Cornell. The EcoYoff Living & Learning Center is part of CRESP, Senegal. Incorporated as a local Senegalese non-profit organization in 1999, CRESP works in partnership with the private sector Senegalese environmental research firm, TROPIS Environment, and has welcomed more than 200 students, interns and volunteers (see below for current projects). |
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With a Senegalese student partner, examine the simple living practices that make it possible, today as in ages past, to live lightly and joyously in pre-industrial conditions. |
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Experience the harmony of spacious non-linear village layouts and building structures that evolved in synchrony across the centuries with the flow of life in community. |
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Discover traditional healing practices that protect and reintegrate individuals with their families and communities through trance dancing, shrine offerings, amulets and ritual giving to the poor. |
Define your own research project in the broad and interdisciplinary field of development.
This course supports American and Senegalese student teams with closely related interests in exploring topics of their choice in areas including women’s empowerment, education, the environment, social justice, health, business and ecotoursim.
Program faculty link students to local experts as counselors and mentors. Each team also has an EcoYoff faculty supervisor.
Students may carry out their independent study in the same field as their service learning, or in another area. This course include eight sessions in social science and action research methods focusing on student projects.
Together with village teams, you will continue to resolve the challenges and expand the effectiveness of appropriate technologies in an area of your choice, selected from: solar or other alternative energy; organic agriculture/Permaculture, drip irrigation; health and nutrition; reproductive health; control of acute health issues; formal and non-formal education; women's microcredit and small business development, traditional medicine, environmental protection, ecotourism and more.
Check out the student weblogs »
Browse the photo gallery»
About 60% of each semester takes place at the EcoYoff Living and Learning Center in the capitol city of Dakar. EcoYoff is based in a modernizing 600 year-old Lebou ethnic fishing village in the suburban commune of Yoff. EcoYoff originated with a small group of volunteers at the Third International EcoCities and Ecovillages Conference in 1996, and has a permaculture garden and workshop facilities located near the Atlantic. The other 40% is devoted to experiential learning and service during a 10 day visits and a three-four week stay in ecovillages in different ecological zones. Travel is by bus, car, boat and horse-drawn cart to remote areas to participate in activities that aim to make positive contributions in the communities, your own lives and those of your village work teams and families.
Typical of villages in which students have performed service learning for several weeks is Nder, former capital of the Wolo Kingdom situated along the banks of Lac de Guiers — reservoir for most of Senegal's potable water supply. Nder is one of the leaders of the Senegal sustainable village development network. There, student and village teams ran a nutrition and anemia rehabilitation workshop for young children and several non-formal education activities for children and women’s enterprise groups. They also created an organic farm with drip irrigation, a DVD of the musical drama of Nder’s historic saga and ecotourism brochures and plaques.
Mlomp, in southwest Senegal, near the border between Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, is the village selected for the long visit of the Fall 2006 semester. Mlomp households, built in decorative mudbrick architecture with thatched roofs, are grouped in circles with a 3-km diameter, shaded by stately silk cotton trees, and surrounded by agricultural lands that are flooded during the rainy season. Mlomp also is known for its organic agriculture and its mainly animist and Christian population, as distinct from Senegal’s Muslim North. The ecovillage of Mlomp has been successful in mounting projects through self-help, using local resources, and it is eager to host and work with the Living Routes program.
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| Senegal's ecovillage headquarters at
Yoff on the tropical Atlantic coast. more photos
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| During the community service learning
project, students work in children's nutrtion and health,
ecotourism development, women's issues and many other topics
of interest. more photos » |
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| Students come from colleges and universities
around the U.S. and partner with Senegalese students to gain
knowledge and understanding of sustainability and ecotoursism
development. |
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Sustainable Development In Senegal, Theory And Practice
ANTH 397A (4 cr.)
This introductory university course in sustainable development theory and practice is co-taught by the Senegalese coordinator for the formulation of the nation's sustainability strategy, and the American Director of the EcoYoff Sustainable Community Development Program, training center for the 28-member villages in Senegal's ecovillage network (GEN Senegal). Integrating top-down and bottom-up development perspectives, the course focuses on understanding, assessing and attempting to contribute to Senegal's sustainability policies and programs. U.S. students work with Senegalese university students in pairs and in teams based on common interest. The instructors and guest lecturers are bilingual in French and English. Non-French speaking students will be paired with local English speakers.
Independent Study in Sustainable International Development
ANTH 396 (4 cr.)
Through discussion with EcoYoff faculty and others, students define their own research projects. This course supports American and Senegalese student teams with closely related interests in exploring topics of their choice in domains related to sustainable international development. Each student is linked to local experts as counselors and mentors, while each student team also has an EcoYoff faculty supervisor. Students may carry out their independent study in the same field as their service learning, or in another area. To facilitate student projects, this course includes eight sessions in social science and action research methods. Depending on their type of study, students typically carry out some structured data collection and analysis. They share their findings in a research paper and in presentations both for the village community and in a final session for other students, faculty and staff.
Community Service Learning in Developing Countries
HONORS 397 (4 cr.)
Community Service Learning (CSL) is the integration of community service and learning for the enhancement of both. In developing countries where services often are minimal, community development skills are keys to effective service learning. Starting at the EcoYoff sustainable community development center in Dakar, American students paired with Senegalese student partners will learn introductory participatory action research (PAR) and capacity building skills, while engaging in service learning in a poor urban community. They will prepare to apply these development skills in phase two, during which they will live and serve in Mlomp, a village in southwest Senegal, near the border between Senegal and Guinea-Bissau that continues to practice organic agriculture, eat locally produced foods and live in traditional ecological housing. Service learning and PAR will take place in collaboration with the dynamic local ecovillage association and their development partners. Course completion will be at EcoYoff.
Students take one of the following language courses:
Intermediate - Advanced French
FRENCH 290 (4 cr.)
This course is provided as an alternative to beginning Wolof for American students proficient in French, who wish to gain fluency and confidence in both oral and written French, increase their professional French vocabulary in the area of international development and explore African cultures through a range of texts, taken from original sources by African authors. In addition to written exercises, students will read the local press regularly, listen to certain Senegalese radio programmes in French, and discuss the main news in class with their instructor. They also will review French technical vocabulary used in their sustainable development classes. The course encourages intense cultural interaction while building students’ linguistic competence and communication skills.
Introductory Wolof and Senegalese Culture
FRENCH 290 (4 cr.)
This introductory course will use audio-aural methods in conversational dialogues adapted from existing texts, as well as language learning games, Wolof proverbs and poetry. Only Wolof will be spoken in the classroom, with few exceptions. Adult literacy texts will serve to introduce written Wolof and to familiarize students with the rural lifestyles of Senegal. Students will also become familiar with and discuss the health, hygiene and other development messages that literacy programs target to the illiterate rural women who are their main participants.
Earn 16 transferable credits through the University of Massachusetts
Amherst
Find
out about transferring credits to your home school »
View the full curriculum for this program »
The following is a list of core faculty. In addition, a wide variety of specialists from
local universities and development agencies teach collaboratively in the course.
Ousmane Aly Pame
Ph.D., English, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal
In addition to directing the Global Ecovillage Network's EcoYoff Living & Learning Center, Pame is a professor in the Department of English at Cheikh Anta Diop University, where he has been teaching translation and English civilization and literature for the past five years. He has also taught French language and Senegalese literature in the Department of French at Exeter University (United Kingdom) and business English at Suffolk University's Dakar Campus, and at CESAG, a West African sub-regional Management School. He has significant experience coordinating study abroad programs for U.S. students in Dakar, and is the local director for Living Routes' Senegal programs.
Oumar Diene
Ph.D candidate and M.A., Geography, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal
IDiene is the assistant director of both the Living Routes program and the Global Ecovillage Network's EcoYoff Living & Learning Center at Yoff. He is currently completing his doctoral thesis on the impacts of modernization on in the former village Yoff. Diene is the Secretary General of the Global Ecovillage Network, Senegal (GENSEN), and has worked extensively in development projects in areas including permaculture, ecotourism, and renewable energies. Diene leads the Action Research methods classes which enable Living Routes' Senegalese and U.S.students to work and learn effectively in host villages.
Henri Lo
Ph.D. Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Nancy, France
Professor of Environmental Studies at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar's Institute for Environmental Sciences, Lo is a director of Senegal's National Commission on Sustainable Development and chiefly responsible for developing Senegal's national sustainable development strategy. Lo serves as advisor and lecturer at EcoYoff and Living Routes programs.
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credit... Included