Disaster an Opportunity to Make Development More People-Centred
As happened with the Asian tsunami a couple of years ago, hundreds of millions of dollars will be raised for the earthquake victims in Haiti. And there is no reason to think we will fail to respond with similar generosity when the next natural disaster strikes with similar intensity of impact.
I teach a course on disaster planning and management. In the last few days, I have had a chance to discuss and reflect on the tragedy in Haiti with the students who took my course in the fall.
One of the ideals in disaster planning that we argue for but that has never drawn serious attention is to use disaster as an opportunity to enable communities to regain control of their lives and their future and to regain the capacity to support themselves with dignity. A disaster of this magnitude, we argue, creates an opportunity for redirecting development towards a more people-centred course.
The New York Times reported last week that thousands of earthquake survivors are migrating back to their hometowns and villages, where “flowers pink as cherry bubblegum climbed fences by the road . . . .” But the countryside also shows the effects of colonialism, corporate greed and government corruption — lack of green cover and impoverished soils. Only two per cent of Haiti is forested. The lush forests in the neighbouring Dominican Republic tell us this doesn’t have to be so.
Here is an opportunity for the U of G community to make a difference for the long term. Let’s use some of the funds we raise to develop an action plan for recovering and enriching Haiti’s rural resources.
Guelph has experts in land-use planning, rural development, rural extension, agriculture, farming systems, forestry and forest products, tourism and business development, to name a few. Let’s use some of the funds to apply this array of expertise to develop a credible and cost-effective action plan for a sustainable Haiti.
Such a plan could be submitted to the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Centre and the Canadian Council for International Co-operation to help the Canadian government and non-governmental organizations establish a Haiti program that would enable people to work the land again, run their own businesses and sustain themselves in the countryside.
Prof. Nonita Yap, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development
Women’s Studies Has Served Students From Across University for 30 Years
On CBC’s The Current Jan. 12, during a segment on women’s studies, Prof. Serge Desmarais, associate vice-president (academic), stated that in the last five years, the women’s studies program at Guelph “had fewer than 25 students in the program, which means on average each year between five and, say, eight students maximum registered for the program.”
This had the unfortunate effect of suggesting, especially with the use of “students” instead of “majors” and in the absence of the word “new” — five to eight “new” students” — that the program served a handful of students and so perhaps deserved to be cut.
In the past five years from 2005 to 2009, the number of majors in women’s studies was 20, 28, 25, 25 and 35 (25 before the University started cancelling the program). If you include minors and areas of concentration (for students doing a three-year degree) — and those students, too, are registered in the program, after all — the figures are 33, 49, 46, 47 and 54.
In response to The Current segment, one women’s studies graduate wrote me: “I did a three-year degree, so women’s studies counted as an area of concentration. Almost every one of the 30 courses I took related in some way, shape or form to women’s studies, but my degree didn’t ‘count’ in the number crunching that served to decimate the program I hold so dear.”
For those who may not be aware of this, even after the cancellation of the program, our “Introduction to Women’s Studies” remains, I believe, the largest intro course in the College of Arts, with more than 400 students. The second-year course “Women and Representation” is similarly always oversubscribed, with close to 200 students.
For 30 years, women’s studies at U of G has served increasingly large numbers of students from all across the University, including students in engineering, math, fine art and economics. As the subject becomes a “teachable” in high schools, there will be even more demand.
Prof. Helen Hoy, English and Theatre Studies and Women’s Studies,
Co-ordinator of Women’s Studies, 1995 to 2002
At Guelph welcomes letters to the editor. They should be limited to 500 words and submitted electronically to Barbara Chance at b.chance@exec.uoguelph.ca.