Skip to main content

Managing in the Field: Samantha Lawton



Managing a project in the field has been a new experience for me. Throughout the year my as co-director and I have organized meetings and communicated with community partners. With our indispensable team we were able to decide on the project direction, choose workshop topics and work tirelessly to bring it all together when we came down to Sabana Grande. But things change when you arrive. Local colleagues are busy, team members get sick, and it rains all afternoon. I - perhaps described as more on the “like to be in control” side - have learned innumerable life lessons in my time here, most of which can be summed up by saying “be adaptable”.

One major change since we arrived in Sabana Grande was the amount of chicken coops we planned on building during our time there. Because of community schedules, weather, and a community desire to involve more people in the project, the UC Davis team was not able to construct complete chicken coops for everyone involved in our project. This has made me appreciate our community partners even more (if that was possible). We worked together with our colleagues to brainstorm solutions. They suggested we have people vote on what materials for coops were hardest for them to obtain and just supply these materials instead of the materials for a full chicken coop like we had planned before more people were added to the project. The community decided on tin roofing and nails. In our time there we could work with our local colleagues to put roofs on the most difficult coops and then our partners could finish the coops when we returned to school.


Measuring the coops in order to add a roof


I am so thankful to have been part of a resilient, creative and caring team from Davis and Sabana Grande. One of the most important things I can do as a manager in the field is set up opportunities for discussion and collaboration. The rest seems to follow with a little hard work and flexibility.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to the UC Davis Blum Center Blog!

Here you will find updates on our organization, and blog posts written by each of our Blum Fellows about their experiences abroad. Make sure to check out our website at blumcenter.ucdavis.edu, and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UCDavisBlumCenter to get regular updates and see our upcoming events.
Post a Comment
Read more

Visiting the New Roots Farm, By Stella Sappington

At this point in my project I have incorporated my supervisors notes into the first draft of the survey, asked questions regarding his changes, and begun to survey clients. Many of the changes he made were for the purposes of brevity and clarity. He removed the questions I had in place regarding favorite foods and whether the interviewee was the primary shopper, as well as an experimental question about community meals. He also managed to consolidate the multiple questions I had regarding food insecurity that were separated whether they interrogated price, unavailability or distance. I questioned these changes as I was concerned about the knowledge gap between shopper and interviewee that one report mentioned and elucidating rich responses to all aspects of food security. However, I ultimately incorporated each of his changes. At this time I have called 80 numbers intending to administer the survey with only 10 respondents. Their answers are so far similar in nature and offer good gu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sky-High Natural Dyes by Jennifer Hoover

In June of 2014, I was bracing myself for my last few days in the Himalayan village I had come to call home. I had spent 3 months there, befriending a few women with whom I worked on various textile projects. As we wrung out the last of our skeins of yarn over a dye bath, Nirmala commented, “You will always remember the time you had only two students.” “No,” I countered, “I will remember the time I had two teachers.” “Three students, three teachers,” we agreed. This, to me, is the power of participatory action research: we are all students, and all teachers; all researchers, and all research subjects. And so I am thrilled to be back for further collaboration, with the support of the Blum Center. I am here in Kullu Valley working with some participants in a women's self-help group (www.whims.in) who produce textile goods as a way of generating some independent income and preserving traditional craft skills. Although the women have started working with the acrylic ...
5 comments
Read more