Julia Hamel
Posted by Julia Hamel on December 1st, 2011
Nothing is more exhilarating and fulfilling to me than being thrown out of my element, out of my comfort zone and head first into a completely different setting with its unique challenges, cultures, tastes, smells and way of life. My name is Julia Hamel and I am counting down the days to be warmed (scorched would be more accurate) by the equatorial sun in Sri Lanka. I am reaching the end of my final semester at Bishop’s University, where I combined a Liberal Arts Honours degree with a Major in International Studies: Global Governance and a Minor in Philosophy, thus feeding my great thirst to better understand world politics, but also cultivating my analytical, critical and communication skills and figuring out who I am and what I believe in. I realized that fulfillment lay not in exercising my rights with the selfish impunity of my generation, but in the exciting and arduous journey to become a responsible, concerned and caring human being who pours her energy into learning and working, with an open mind and heart, as part of a community. I feel more than ready to trade theory for practice.
I think my life’s journey guided me, experience by experience, towards this internship. I’ve been an expat so many times that I learned to relish the challenge of creating home away from home again and again. I was born in Germany and have lived most of my life in the Eastern Townships, but my most formative experiences have been living in the bush in Nigeria as a child, in Mexico as an adolescent and in France as an adult. Backpacking independently on a shoestring in Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia has made me strong, flexible, self-reliant and confident in my abilities to appreciate and integrate into a wide variety of contexts. When I can’t leave the country, I live, work and volunteer with refugees and immigrants on a daily basis and I have worked for several years in advocacy, awareness raising and integration with a wide variety of minority or marginalized people (LGBT community, political prisoners, battered women and urban youth). With this internship I get to bring together my two great passions: travelling and working to empower marginalized people and their community to generate positive change.
WUSC’s moto is “Education Changes the World”. My 6 year experience as a member of the amazingly close-nit, dedicated and active Bishops/Champlain chapter of WUSC’s Refugee Sponsorship Program changed my world; it has shaped my character and perspective, has been the inspiration for my honours thesis on Refugee Law Reform in Canada, and has given the direction for my Masters Degree and future career in international development. This Student Without Borders internship will be my first experience as a volunteer abroad and I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to commit my skills, energy and soul to the Project for Rehabilitation Through Education and Training: Opportunities for Training in Needed Skills in Sri Lanka PRET-OPTIONS for 6 months in Colombo.
I am excited to meet the SWB Sri Lanka team and to share in the intense, exhausting, edifying, overwhelming and exhilarating experience of contributing to the advancement of this project day by day with my new colleagues. I am eager to sharpen my skills and put them to use, surrounded by a team that supports me, challenges me and propels me forward. I hope to contribute in a meaningful way and that the fruit of my labour will have a tangibly positive impact on the everyday lives of marginalized peoples in Sri Lanka. Beyond the office, I look forward to learning the language, developing new friendships and adopting the expat lifestyle in Colombo.
One of the personal challenges I expect to face (considering the fact that I am a country girl who is used to wide open spaces and who instinctively seeks out the atmosphere of small and remote villages when travelling) will be learning to adapt to and appreciate the unique pace and charms of a third world capital city. I think the delicious food at every street corner will play an important part in helping me enjoy the city life! I can’t wait to have my taste buds tickled by all the spicy-tangy-sweet-salty flavours of an incredibly exciting and complex cuisine and to settle into the local curry+rice 3X daily routine!
