Application for the 2009 Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship

Emily Hedin

Application for the 2009 Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship

NARRATIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

My endeavors have led me down many paths. I have experienced the trenches of campaign politics. I have helped Somali refugees acclimate to Midwest culture and climate. And I have worked alongside Peruvian women as they picked up the pieces of a generation shattered by terrorism. Yet my experiences are not as disparate as they appear; the theme of partnership unites them.

My journey began when I met U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone. I shook the Senator’s hand for the first time on a July afternoon over refried beans at the Burnsville City Bean Feed. I was not yet old enough to vote, but the Senator’s clarion call for social justice captivated me, and I began volunteering for his campaign. I stuffed envelopes, knocked on doors, and registered voters at my high school. Then, on October 25, 2002, just twelve days before the election, a tiny plane crashed near the small town of Eveleth, killing Senator Wellstone and members of his family and staff. The Wellstone Campaign invited me to contribute my skills and valued my participation. I have tried to do the same for others in subsequent leadership roles.

My commitment to social justice led me next to Macalester College where I sought new ways to strengthen my community. I began volunteering at the Jane Addams School for Democracy as a tutor to female Somali immigrants preparing for the citizenship exam. I quizzed my students on English grammar and U.S. civics. However, the women wanted something different. More than a flow-chart illustrating the legislative process, they wanted a guide to help them write this new chapter in their story. I found myself deciphering report cards, health insurance applications, and bank statements. And when I stopped thinking of myself as their teacher, I began to learn from them. Our lessons became cultural exchanges as discussion drifted towards Islam, women’s rights, and the civil war in Somalia. We walked the path from relocated refugee to United States citizen together, not as student and teacher, but as learning partners.

As a student at Macalester College, I concentrated my work in political science and international studies on multiculturalism. While I specialized in Latin America, I also studied East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. I learned Spanish, French, and Wolof. My honors thesis analyzed the relationship between leaders of the developed world and leaders of Sub-Saharan Africa. Using Senegal as a case study, I proposed a theoretical framework for explaining why African leaders have accepted neoliberalism. I prepared for a world in which cross-cultural communication would be paramount.

The summer after graduation, I worked with the Comité de Derechos Humanos de Villa El Salvador, a human rights organization in Lima, Peru. As an Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellow, I implemented two workshops that addressed terrorist and state-sponsored violence against women. I initially assumed that our identity as women would cultivate a safe space for discussion; however, I found that participants identified more as survivors and as citizens of Villa El Salvador. As a result, I did something I have seen few community organizers do: I kept quiet. I encouraged participants to facilitate discussion and determine the workshop’s direction. Participants explored the causes of violence, shared personal stories, and discussed women’s role in human rights protection. Crowded into a dark church undercroft next to my compañeras, I encouraged new leaders and built new partnerships.

I now live in Lima, Peru where I co-direct a community center called the Center for Development with Dignity in the poor neighborhood of La Encantada. Still under construction, the center will house grassroots development programs and community education. The center works on three fronts. First, we forge complementary partnerships between Peruvians and North Americans. Deviating from the development paradigm that expects donation from the Global North and cooperation from the Global South, we encourage our members to propose their own participation. Second, we foster a family-owned community space. One family will live on the second floor and will coordinate the center. By placing a family in the center, we create a fresh public space that retains community investment. Third, we empower neighborhood activists. We spark the leadership necessary to combat La Encantada’s poverty.

From Minnesota to Peru, I have sought new partnerships to address inequality. I am confident that with time, education, and experience, I will be able to articulate a philosophy of development that not only embodies my commitment but also manifests itself in quantifiable, positive change throughout the world.

Prompt: "Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision." —V.S. Naipaul.

HOW DOES THIS NAIPAUL QUOTE RELATE TO YOUR INTELLECTUAL AND OTHER PURSUITS? (3,000 CHARACTERS)

Throughout his canon, V.S. Naipaul spoke of freedom and limits with regard to the formerly colonized world. This particular quote speaks to a concern that has lingered in my mind as I navigate my path towards a career in international development: that establishing a niche will do more than limit my freedom, it will leave me unable or unwilling to understand the multiple and deep-seated effects of my actions. I spent one year in Senegal as a Fulbright Scholar, studying how the extension of financial services (microfinance) impacts women. This experience helped me articulate the role specialization should play in my academic and professional pursuits. I learned that development work is ineffective unless tightly focused. However, this focus does not negate the seminal importance of understanding development efforts within a broad context.

For my Fulbright research, I studied an American-based NGO called Anti-Poverty Initiative (API) that aimed to reduce poverty by helping women increase their incomes. They did so by lending money to groups of women who then established small businesses. My initial research showed success; the women earned markedly higher incomes through micro-entrepreneurship. Yet, women reported little change in their living conditions as male family members immediately assumed control over the money. Moreover, the mental and physical stress of juggling child rearing, house keeping, and entrepreneurship manifested itself in serious health concerns.

I struggled to understand how a program that so acutely identified its goal could be so blind to its negative impact. API’s niche was actually its Achilles Heel: by focusing so narrowly on income, they blinded themselves to other causes of poverty. An increase in income should result in better living standards, health care, and education; however, the lack of social and political opportunities for these women negated the positive impact of their economic empowerment. I concluded that the most effective development worker understands how economic, political, and social factors influence an individual as well as how interference of a development project—regardless of its specific focus—will consequently impact an individual at all three levels.

Since completing my Fulbright research, my belief that specialization should be understood in light of social, political, and economic factors has continued to drive my intellectual and professional pursuits. To many, this seems like a tall order; how can one organization remain so acutely aware of how its work impacts broad questions of economic, social, and political freedoms? In my current work in Lima, Peru, I try to do so by keeping human dignity as my core value. For example, the role of income and wealth is critically important to our understanding of development. However, many development practitioners (such as API) mistakenly identify wealth as the ends of development. In doing so, they create a niche that can be counter-productive. We do not value wealth itself; rather we value the ability of wealth to help us obtain a good life. A development program concerned with economic development should keep its projects well-defined and tightly organized. Yet, I propose that such a program should focus not on the accumulation of wealth but on the enhancement of freedoms that allow people to seek wealth and obtain the life they value. The role of income and wealth—important as it is—has to be integrated into a broader and fuller picture of human dignity.

Niapaul wrote during the period of decolonization, when the world was trying to forge a new order. His words have particular relevance to the development field, whose task, in part, is to address the deep-seated inequalities fostered by centuries of colonization. While I disagree that a niche in an inherently limiting entity, Naipaul’s quote reaffirms my commitment to approaching development with clarity of thought and scrutiny of intellect. While working in a specific issue, such as women’s microfinance, I strive to always understand the full impact of my actions for myself and other communities.

SHORT ESSAY #1: EXPLAIN WHY YOU HAVE CHOSEN YOUR FIRST-CHOICE UNIVERSITY FOR YOUR GRADUATE PROGRAM (1500 CHARACTERS)

When I began my graduate school search, the University of Oxford immediately stood out. The mission of the Queen Elizabeth House (Oxford’s Department of Development Studies) complements and supports my academic and professional goals. First, Oxford emphasizes an inter-disciplinary approach to development; complex issues such as poverty cannot be explained by one discipline alone. I am drawn to Oxford’s inter-disciplinary research initiatives and the inter-disciplinary core courses of the development studies curriculum. Second, I share the commitment of the Queen Elizabeth House to study the social impacts of development, understanding the consequences of development work on the lives it touches. I will contribute to this dialogue by sharing my own research on female empowerment in West Africa with Oxford’s International Gender Studies Centre. I will continue to address gender and poverty with Dr. Barbara Harriss-White as well as Dr. Zakki Wahaj, who has agreed to supervise my MPhil thesis. Finally, the Queen Elizabeth House is committed to building development models that focus on human well-being. I plan to use my graduate degree to guide my life’s work in poverty alleviation and human development. Programs such as the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative assure me that Oxford will provide the education to propel me into a career of ethical and effective development leadership.

SHORT ESSAY #2: EXPLAIN THE REASONS FOR YOUR STUDY AND CAREER CHOICE (1500 CHARACTERS)

I have three principle goals in pursuing an MPhil in development studies. First, I aim to better understand the diverse causes of poverty. In today’s globalized world, immense wealth and dire poverty exist in all countries; antiquated classifications of First World and Third World no longer adequately reflect the distribution of global inequalities. To be an effective development leader, I must be able to identify the shifting causes of poverty within, as well as across, national boundaries. Second, I want to use this understanding of poverty to build development models that promote human well-being. Previous development policies that focus heavily on macroeconomic growth have ignored the catastrophic impacts drastic economic reform can have on vulnerable communities. The giants of development—such as the United States Agency for International Development—have begun to institute decentralized projects, using community involvement and empowerment as a vehicle for growth. While reducing the opportunities for exploitation of the poor, these programs can be difficult to manage. I will focus my study of development on the potential, as well as the pitfalls, of empowerment-based development programs. Third, I am studying development in order to test and strengthen my own development philosophy, specifically my belief that innovative partnerships ought to be the focal point of development. While development programs are encouraging decentralization, I believe there is more to be done in identifying, utilizing, and encouraging the unique skills of target community members. An education that fulfills these three goals will prepare me to be a leader in programs that fight poverty, first as an development project field director and later as an international development project coordinator.

SHORT ESSAY #3: WHAT ARE YOUR LONG-TERM CAREER PLANS?

My long-term career goal is to work in an international development organization, designing and promoting empowerment-based development programs. I plan to begin as a field director for projects in my two regions of interest (South America and West Africa) and then as an international coordinator for such programs. I am currently the co-director of a community center—the Center for Development with Dignity—in the southern slums of Lima, Peru. The center operationalizes a development model based on innovative partnerships, family involvement in the community, and empowerment of neighborhood activists. One example of our work is leadership workshops that employ the experiences of seasoned community leaders to prepare a new generation of activists. The skills of program coordinators (such as myself) are used to complement, not to dominate, the skills of other community members. Upon completion of my degree, I will expand the work of the Center for Development with Dignity. I will then seek opportunities to work with similar empowerment-based development projects. I am especially interested in programs for women that combine microfinance (the provision of small loans and other financial services) with health services and education. This fieldwork will lay the foundation for working with an international body, such as the World Bank. The Center for Development with Dignity upholds the protection and promotion of human dignity as both the means and the ends of development. While our programs reflect the specific population we live among, this value has global relevance. Once I have molded “development with dignity” into a model with solid theoretical foundations as well as practical applications, I will seek the opportunity to reproduce it in other parts of the world.