A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions..

This week's field journal comes from Isabelle Hürst, our partner from COMUNDO! COMUNDO places professional individuals with a thirst for building capacity in developing countries with partner organizations. Isabelle and her colleague, Cora Jüttemann, joined us last year and will stay with us until 2022!

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Experience is knowledge or skill in a particular area due to long term commitment. COMUNDO, the leading Swiss organisation in the field of personnel development cooperation, encourages the exchange of these experiences. Intercultural learning is fostered on the belief that all people can lead a self-determined life. Convinced about the impact of sharing knowledge and skills, Cora Jüttemann and I joined the organisation and started our work at Impact Network, one of the 15 partner organisations of COMUNDO in Zambia. Within the first four months, I got a better understanding of the rural education setting Impact Network has been supporting for the last ten years. While I learned a lot from existing know-how, my role as Education Development Advisor also allowed me to swap views where challenges are faced.

Whereas COMUNDO provides an intercultural platform for exchanging views, Impact Network launched a new programme in the last school year where teachers visit other teachers in order to learn from one and another. Because of scheduling concerns, it is often not possible for teachers within the same school to even share experiences. Therefore, the professional exchange of teachers between schools was a critical pilot that we wanted to try! The chosen teachers concluded that peer observations can help them to improve their teaching methodologies.

Experience also refers to past events, knowledge, and feelings that shape our character. People with various professional backgrounds coming from seven different nations, namely Zambia, USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, bring a range of cultural perspectives into the daily routine of Impact Network. Examining elements from different points of views takes some time and requires a great deal of energy but it also increases the awareness of options and identifies practical solutions.

Finally, an experience is an active or passive exposure to something that leaves an impression on us. The cooperation between COMUNDO and Impact Network, within Impact Network or between teachers not only enriches personalities and strengthens organisations but also improves living conditions for the population groups involved in the process. Children of Impact Network schools hopefully experience more social justice and well-being since their minds are equally stretched due to quality education Impact Network provides.

- Isabelle