The Senegal Ecovillage
Microfinance Fund

Our innovative study-abroad programs offer participants a unique opportunity to learn about theories and practices of global issues as they relate to sustainable development, the arts, and culture. It assembles students, faculty, and the civil society in order to engage in a participatory field-based learning process that will benefit a number of ecovillages under the network of the Ministry of Ecovillages. Students will totally immerse themselves within the community, while carrying out action research and implementing projects.

Ecovillages are the most important classrooms and learning laboratories, as they provide participants with the conceptual framework and hands-on activities for effective learning. The backbone of our program is the community work coupled with academic learning and research through engaging class sessions. These rigorous courses will cover fundamentals of sustainable development, research methods, program design and implementation, and language classes. This module’s courses, academic seminars, and field-study employs a people-centered approach and dialogue-based exploration of the dynamics of sustainable development in Senegal through experiencial learning.

With full support and access to SEM’s network of academics and professionals, students will learn cross cultural communication skills  they will put into practice while following their passions and intellectual pursuits with a 3-week field-based project in one of our ecovillages.

Through our study-abroad programs we aim to accomplish the following:

• Instill global citizenship in today’s youth through hands-on projects with local communities.
• Prepare future leaders by developing their cross-cultural understanding.
• Promote sustainable development by addresing global issues locally in a participatory manner.
• Unlock the potential in each student to become an agent of social change.
• Bridge the gap between cultures by building and promoting mutual understanding.

A. Multidisciplinary Coursework

At SEM International Education Institute (SEM IEI), programs cut across disciplines to meet the demand of 21st century education. The vast field of sustainable development ensures that all of the students, regardless of their majors, will learn tremendously in our programs. Students in sociology, business, politics, economy, education, pre-med, engineering, public health, history, etc., will all benefit from our holistic programs. Students, parents, and faculty can expect excellence from our staff and in return we expect students to put their best efforts forward to meet the expectations of our academically challenging study-abroad programs.

B. Cross-cultural Experiential Learning

At SEM International Education Institute, we take a hands-on approach to study-abroad, as we believe it is through exposure that individuals develop mutual cultural understanding. By combining theory and practice we provide students with a high quality education through classroom teaching, seminars, field trips, and homestays.  In today’s global economy, it is necessary to develop a high level of cultural competence to stay current with the job market. That is exactly what our programs are designed to do. Through experiential learning, students develop observation and analytical skills to understand critical global issues from many angles and adapt solution to local needs. SEM is a leader in promoting cross-cultural competency as we select local Senegalese university students to participate in our programs. This builds a two-way street learning exchange at all levels of our programs while other study-abroad programs pride themselves with only a homestay component for cross-cultural communication skills acquisition.

C. Focus on Collaboration and Partnership

We work with a number of academic institutions and organizations from the private or public sector to provide our program participants high quality services.  All of partners are selected after a careful review of their records and with safety and security of our program participants in mind. We believe in diversifying without jeopardizing the high quality of service that is expected of us. Our targeted ecovillages are rural and semi-urban settlements striving to become fully sustainable while meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. The SEM Fund collaborates with ANEV (National Agency of Ecovillages) to support sustainable local development through educational, project implementation, and technical assistance.

D. PROGRAM GOALS

The goal of this program is to provide students with the fundamentals of sustainable development beyond rhetoric by studying global issues in a practical manner. Exploring and interpreting, policies and praxis of the field of sustainable development with the support of professionals to ensure students gain the necessary knowledge as leaders of tomorrow. Therefore, these programs strive to deliver an education current with the global context by delving deeper into real issues, affecting real people. It is in itself a paradigm change in the field of study-abroad in its participatory community-based approach to learning and effecting social change. By placing the focus on the grassroots level, students are able to venture into effective development and gain the necessary cross-cultural knowledge to succeed in global job market. More importantly, our courses will provide a global prospective on many topics including politics, history, science, agriculture, race, ethnicity, international trade, public health, the environment, etc. Our academic rigor lies in:

1. The quality of practical learning through the empowerment of real projects.
2. The collection and distribution of relevant information.
3. The practice of higher level reasoning that faculty, students, and communities will use to translate abstract concepts into operational realities.

Thereby students will leave this program with a better understanding of sustainable development within today’s global geo-political and socio-cultural realities.

E. OBJECTIVES FOR STUDENTS

• Create overlapping communities of students, staff, home stay families, and eco-villages, which will create the give-and-take “living and learning” framework.
• Implement Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and carry out projects with local communities, enabling the creation of practical supports that communicate the concepts of an eco-village to all parties involved.
• Learn the principles and the techniques of sustainable development, utilizing a practical and theoretical vision of international development programs and the activities and traditional local development that will promote sustainability in Senegal.
• Create and reinforce paradigms for multicultural communication, global citizenship, and the construction of a sustainable future.
• Increase language and cross-cultural communications skills.
• Maintain a satisfactory balance between independent individual experience and group learning.
• Contribute to a cross-cultural living and learning experience.
• Hone group-building skills and work effectively as a team to tackle social, economic, and environmental issues in Senegal.
• Master the most important skills, facts, and theories of all course work for the semester.
• Refine and achieve individual learning goals that each participant defines early in the program and revisits periodically over the course of the semester.