A Story of Community Working Experience
Nishat, SUSI student from Bangladesh, shares her favorite parts of the program, and a few of the things she will take with her.
Earlier this summer students from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka were in Seattle for a new program coordinated by FIUTS, the Study of the U.S. Institute for Student Leaders in Journalism and New Media (SUSI). Each student has written a blog post about the experience. Here's a post by Nishat Parvez from Bangladesh about her time in Seattle:
Before the SUSI program, I did not have any friend ever outside my country Bangladesh, but now I have about 40 friends from different countries. When I took the flight to the USA, I could not even imagine what experiences were waiting for me. SUSI is not only a program about leadership, it’s a program of practical experiences of life in the United States, journalism, civic engagement, community service and so much more.
SUSI- “The Study of the US Institutes for Student Leaders” is a program which is very prestigious in South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India. The program is funded by US State Department. The main focus of the program is "New Media and Journalism."
The United States of America rules the world, so it is important to know about their media and Journalism. After 3 weeks of the program, I know a lot about the laws of this country; mostly 1st amendment, freedom of press, big media, new media and small media laws. New forms of media have brought a great change in the old media of US like QUOW Radio, Seattle times, and even local papers like the Eatonville Dispatch. One example I found rather astonishing was the ‘Puget Sound Off’ blog, which is regularly monitored to provide police with information used to improve Seattle’s security.
I came to know about the diversity of US society with interviews with different types of people in the city. I also learned this through my South Asian mates, FIUTS Staff and other SUSI Ambassadors from different parts of the world.
I learned how to communicate with people from different countries. From my childhood I have easily been able to become friends with any people with my communication skills. But in the US, I found that when I went to speak, people do not always catch my language, often because of the pronunciation differences. I was astonished at this. In my country, I have to use my mother tongue for studying. So I have some problems with this language. But day by day, I have come to realize I can speak about any subject using English. It's improving!
All the participants are living in the University of Washington campus. So I know the campus life. I also lived in my campus dormitory, but there boys and girls have to live in separate building. I feel like a UW student as I have to take my food from the Local Point (a cafeteria on campus) and shop at the District Market (a campus grocery store) with a “Huskycard.”
We had to do community services in a food bank, and at a community farm. We also worked in a street newspaper called Real Change. This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. The newspaper has changed the life of their homeless workers. When two workers told about their lives living on the street, and about their new lives, I could not control my emotions.
I can’t possibly capture everything about my experience in just a single story, but I want to share my experience about the food bank. I think all my SUSI friends were writing something about this. The concept of food bank is very new for me.
We have some community based food delivering or some food truck program, but it is very uncommon back home. The foods at the food bank in Seattle, mostly vegetables and fruits, come there from the community farms, and we also visited such a farm. Its name was Marra Farm. So I have two experience based on food and agriculture, one is food bank and another is community farming. There are many volunteers in those places. We have just youth volunteers back home, but there are so many elderly volunteers here. I also found a lady who seemed a lot like my grandma. I told her that she seemed like my grandma, and she praised me a lot. Tom, one of the FIUTS staff, took us to the food bank and helped us a lot. We made some sandwiches there. Then we took all the things down from the truck and loaded them inside the food bank . It was a whole bunch of team work. You have to make everything done with teamwork. You can help each member in a team to get all your work done. I learned this from the food bank service. Helping others is often necessary to complete your own job. It's an amazing skill of leadership.
There was another cross cultural experience in the food bank. I know some Spanish, so I spoke with the Spanish-speaking people. There are so many people who come to the food bank. Most of them are not native English speakers, and many can’t understand English well. We had to use gestures with our hands or show them numbers on our fingers to tell them the quantity of items they could take. This is one of the very old tricks, but it enhanced my concrete skills of leadership. Through this food bank experience I learned about civic engagement and community service.
Every group work project and every class has enhanced concrete skills in critical thinking and communications. With these projects and classes we learned about the media’s influence on social and traditional levels.
Oh I forgot to give thanks the SUSI ambassadors, and applicants. Thanks to all of you guys. You just make my life 'happily ever after'. I again opened my twitter account after come to Seattle. It helps me keep up with the new media's challenge to flourish.
By the way, I want to use all my leadership skills, communication phenomena and new media experiences back home. I learned the theme "don’t go back when challenges come, try to face them." Without facing the obstacles in your path, you will never get to your desired destination.
The Study of the U.S. Institutes (SUSI), sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, promote a better understanding of the people, institutions, and culture of the United States among foreign students, teachers, and scholars. Study of the U.S. Institutes are short-term academic programs for groups of undergraduate leaders, educators, and scholars from around the world.
The program in Seattle is coordinated by the Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS), a local non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Washington that promotes international friendship and cross-cultural understanding in the region. The Seattle Globalist, a daily publication covering the connections between Seattle and the rest of the globe, is collaborating with FIUTS to deliver courses on topics in journalism and new media.