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Students complete their project and support community development in one of the following areas (not all areas are available as each village works to identify the areas in which it has the strongest needs):
Environmental protection: Students can help to prevent agricultural run-off from polluting water supplies, or engage in reforestation, particularly replanting of mangroves to restore the river and coastal ecosystems. Others opportunities include preserving the habitats of migrating birds, small antelope, and chimpanzees.
Permaculture: Nine of the 33 ecovillages have set up organic gardens based on Permaculture principles. They need assistance in water management, composting, soil preservation and restoration, seed saving, organic pesticide production, marketing and improving village diets that often are very low in vegetables.
Micro-credit: National micro-credit programs do not yet extend to all of the ecovillages. Service learning students may wish to work with ecovillagers to introduce or expand access to micro-credit.
Women's programs: There are many types of income-generating programs targeted to poor women, who are expected by local culture to be co-earners providing a part of the money for food, school supplies, etc. for their children. Women actively seek adult literacy programs.
Education (K through 12+): The villages have needs for service including teachers and helping engaging children and teachers in recording local folk stories and publishing them as primary school readers. Early childhood nutrition and education: Ongoing UNICEF and USAID projects require help in reducing young child malnutrition rates and in teaching early parenting skills that prepare young children for school. Very high rates of iron deficiency anemia are a major concern, since anemia impairs learning.
Reproductive health: One in 11 Senegalese women dies in childbirth. The ecovillage network members have identified a need for safe childbirth education and emergency transport of high-risk mothers and infants. Women's groups working on this topic need organizational assistance. HIV/AIDS education is a related area for service learning.
Sanitation: The transition from biodegradable waste products to bulk packaging to plastics and cardboard has brought major trash disposal problems that need study.
Information technology: The Global Ecovillage Network is a virtual NGO, linked by the Internet. Several ecovillages already are connected, but more need to be trained to use available equipment.
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Explore the impact of global trends an
d policies on sustainable
development in western Africa, where ancient heritage is still intact
to a degree rarely found elsewhere. Experience evolving models of
community development in five Senegalese Ecovillages - communities
from ancient to modern striving to create cooperative lifestyles
in harmony with their local environment.
In addition to classes and seminars, each U.S. student will partner
with a Senegalese university student fto learn participatory research
methods to engage Senegalese villagers in assessing needs and developing
plans for imporving their quality of life. Students will travel
to several culturally-intact villages and carry out brief field
projects. You build your French language skills as you study the
complex relationship between humans, development needs, and the
environment.
Check out the weblog from this program »
The program begins at the urban ecovillage of EcoYoff, part of a
600 year-old fishing village within Dakar, where you orient to Senegalese
culture, get to know your Senegalese university partners, and become
proficient in Appreciative Inquiry (AI) research methods. With new
cultural and theoretical knowledge, depart for a rural development
tour of Senegalese Ecovillages, ranging from the ancient and traditional
to the modern and ecological, culminating back at Ecoyoff to integrate
the learning. In each Ecovillage, students enter into dialogue with
villagers and participate in cultural activities and work together
on development projects that will benefit the community. Villages
rotate from year to year, to help spread the benefits of sustainable
development. Students live with village families in culturally rich
and ethnically diverse villages including Moor, Wolof and Peul communities
known for their carpet weaving, ceremonial dance, protection of
Acacia forests, and the arts. Villages visited by Living Routes
students in past programs include:
Mboul, the former capital of the Cayor Kingdom,
inhabited by artist and Griot descendents of the old kingdom,
which thrives under pre-industrial conditions.
Méckhé, home to a dynamic women’s
group replacing the use of firewood with solar cookers and succeeding
in an extensive reforestation effort to roll back the advancing
desert.
Ngaparou, site of an algae research center on
the Atlantic Ocean where local villagers have incorporated as
an Ecovillage and have created a Permaculture garden.
Read more about EcoYoff and its location »
Browse the photo gallery »
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Students partner with local Senegalese university students and conduct a project of interest in each of the five Ecovillages.
One 2004 student works with women in the village to conduct an anemia survey of children.
more photos »
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Sustainable Development in West Africa: Theory & Practice
(ANTH 397A) .......... (4 cr.)
Course themes include:
Culture and Spirituality
Economy and Food Security
Populations, Health, and Nutrition
Environment, Infrastructure, and Habitat
French language (optional)
Earn 4 transferable credits through the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Find out about transferring credits to your home school »
View the full curriculum for this program »
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With their Senegalese university partners, students travel by bus, car, boat and horse-drawn cart to visit remote villages and
participate in research and reporting activities that aim to make a difference in the community and sustainable development
activities of Senegalese villagers. more photos »
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Dakar, home of EcoYoff, is a port city and the capital of Senegal. With its rich artistic, historic and intellectual culture,
Senegal is one of the best places to study abroad in West Africa. more photos »
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The program will begin at the EcoYoff Living & Learning Center at the NGO CRESP, in the old fishing village of Yoff, a suburb of Dakar. Here the group orients to Senegalese
culture, American and Senegalese work partnerships are formed and
proficiency in the skills you will facilitate in the villages is developed. We then depart on one or two separate village tours, depending on the size of the group. Each tour will spend 2-3 days in each of three villages, each distinctive in ethnic culture, landscape, ecology, economy, or stage of modernization. We go to different villages from year to year to spread the benefits of our development activities.
In January 2007 about 20 of the 33 ecovillages will already be benefiting from the microcredit program, so our visits will expand among the not-yet-covered villages. Work to define and plan enterprises and investments will alternate with boating, nature walks, lessons (dance, drum, cooking, local crafts), soccer games against the village team and other leisure activities. The course will end at EcoYoff with a write-up of new credit requests and a hard look at the advantages and drawbacks of microcredit as a tool for restoring local economies in Senegal.
Check out a sample course calendar » (Word doc 48k)
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Read what our alumni are saying »
Get contact information for an alum of this program »
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A permaculture garden in Yoff, an Ecovillage in Dakar, Senegal. Students learn how the community purchased and developed the
urban plot, improved the soil and now produces papayas, bananas, herbs in a spiral, and vevitir grass to retain moisture.
more photos »
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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