Student teaches session on development geography

Final year International Development student Emma Leering came into class to tell first year Geography students about her charitable work with women in Malawi.

Emma talked about the charity she has set up, United Amayi. The charity aims to improve prospects and relieve poverty for women in Malawi through education. The women learn conversational English, enhancing job opportunities.

You can find out more about Emma's work here.

Second year Geography and Internation Development students link up with safe house in Tanzania

There are some topics in the geographies of development field that are never easy to deal with and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of these. Instead of delivering a fairly standard lecture on the subject, I decided to involve a charity and a field practitioner in helping me introduce students to the subject at last Thursday’s session.

We began by Skyping Janet Chapman at the London office of the charity Tanzania Development Trust (TDT). Janet is a Trustee and Campaigns Manager of the charity that began its work in 1975. TDT have helped develop the FGM Safe House at Mugumu in north-western Tanzania amongst a range of other projects.

With the help of a set of PowerPoint slides, Janet explained that one of the many challenges facing young girls who wish to avoid FGM is finding their way to a safe house. There are no maps in this part of Tanzania and Janet has made use of online technology and Crowd2Map software to provide accurate maps. The students had the opportunity to join the thousands of volunteers already mapping this region. It soon became a competition to see who could map the most houses.

Fighting FGM at Mugumu, Tanzania. Rhobi talks to villagers at a Roadshow

The highlight of the session was talking to Rhobi Samwelly, TDTs representative in Mara, Tanzania. We used Skype again and had a three-way conversation with her and Janet with students able to ask questions about the safe house she runs and FGM.

It was a fantastic session and I am grateful to both Janet and Rhobi for giving up their time to help us understand a little more about FGM. I am also grateful to the IT support staff who helped me with the technology which worked perfectly.

Kevin Cook, Module Tutor

Geographers learn about water issues from India Director of WaterHarvest charity

On Thursday 6th October second year Geography and Development students were joined by Om Prakash Sharma, Indian Director of the charity WaterHarvest.

Om Prakash Sharma, Indian Director of WaterHarvest charity, with students. (Photo: Chris Fidler)

Om gave an illustrated lecture and answered questions on the topic of water harvesting in semi-arid areas of Rajasthan, India. He drew attention to the conflicts between large scale government projects such as the transfer of water from river to river across India and the traditional village scale water harvesting methods such as the taanka and the chauka.

Om is currently visiting the UK and we were honoured to have him join us for the session.

Northampton graduate returns to campus to talk about her work on health and development

Sonia Coates is a graduate of the University of Northampton and now works as a consultant for IOD PARC, a development consultancy based in Sheffield. Sonia recently returned to class to talk about her experiences as a development consultant.

Sonia Coates

Sonia is currently a team member working to provide technical assistance and Institutional support to UNICEF India for their reducing Open Defecation programme, and has recently completed a piece of participatory research looking at the impacts of WASH on education for girls in Zimbabwe for Plan International. She has experience of managing multi-country projects across sub-Saharan Africa and has also worked in S E Asia. She has a Masters in Public Health and International Development.

The session was illustrated with material from Sonia's work in Malaysia, Nepal, India and several sub-Saharan countries. She discussed various issues, including Water and Sanitation, child health, infectious and neglected tropical diseases.

Sonia answered students' questions on careers in development - and provided some top tips for those interested in working in this sector.

Sonia's top tips for developing a career in International Development