Tag Archives: CIDA

My experiences learning French: Part 3 – Return to Asticou

PolyWogg.ca
December 7 2015

I had been back at Asticou about five weeks when I realized that the passive receiver of language learning was not working for me, and I spent a weekend thinking about some of the challenges I had gone through in the previous year. I kept coming back to the tutor’s analysis — I wasn’t letting go. Except I had, at least to the extent I could i.e. the extent that was within my personality and my learning style, and it hadn’t worked. I needed a different option. Since letting go wasn’t working, what if I took full control?

Lots of people might read that sentence and think, “Oh, of course, the student has to drive their own learning, be responsible, be engaged, etc.”. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something much more dramatic.

I went into my first interview on the Monday morning and it was with a teacher I knew well. He started by saying, “Today we’re going to …” and I stopped him there. I said, “No, we’re not. Here’s what we’re going to work on…we’re going to talk about the work I do at CIDA, my three main tasks, and an experience from the past.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 2 – My first tutor

PolyWogg.ca
December 6 2015

Even though all of us said that we weren’t ready (My experiences learning French – Part 1), the school sent us for the oral test.

And all of us except one failed. The one who passed? The weakest one among us. Partly as her “stories” for telling what she did for a living were pretty simple in comparisons — she was a clerk who did very basic admin work. No one asked her how she answered the phone or sorted the mail. No follow-up questions, ever.

One of the other people in the group was a policy analyst, like me, and during their test, they were asked to explain “How do you go about analysing a policy?”. Umm, what? That question makes no sense. It’s like asking a car mechanic what steps they do to “mechanize” a car. Asking how to do research or do data analysis might be real questions, but an analyst couldn’t answer it well in english, let alone french.

Whatever, we tried, we failed. So back to the grindstone.

Except now that we had our reading and writing done, we could concentrate 100% on oral. This meant interviews every day, two or three per day depending on the day’s rotation.… Read the rest

My experiences learning French: Part 1 – Intro to Asticou

PolyWogg.ca
December 5 2015

I am a not a linguist by anyone’s definition. I’m not very eloquent in speaking English, let alone any other language. I can write pretty well in English, and I edit even better, but other languages were never my strength. I grew up in Peterborough, which was not exactly the hub of linguistic diversity. Or any other kind of diversity, for that matter, at the time, although it’s changed a lot since I was a kid.

Early learning

We started French in grade 4 or 5 as I recall. I was okay, mostly because I was a good student, not because I had an aptitude for it. One year we did “French Xmas” i.e. we made yule log cakes, basically made lunch for the other teachers and one or two parents. I don’t even remember if we got to have any ourselves, other than the cake. I do remember that we got to go into the teacher’s lounge, and for the era, being shocked to see teachers acting normal instead of like their classroom personas. Some of them laughed. One of them was smoking. But that was the only oven/kitchen in the school, so we used it.

I remember I didn’t particularly like French when I was in Grade 8, although I think mostly I was just bored.… Read the rest

Two cultures separated by a common language

PolyWogg.ca
April 12 2013

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been blogging about the merger of DFAIT and CIDA and some of the implementation issues that I think they’ll face. In the short-term, it’s probably mostly about basic implementation and structural questions. In the medium-term, there’s a larger question about “what does ‘development’ mean in a Canadian context”, how the new DFATD sets priorities, and even how to potentially modify legislation that appears to be narrowly focused on development but is really an almost-meaningless bit of rhetoric that combines apples, oranges and potentially a few truck parts, and calls it “poverty reduction”.

Yet, even as people focus on the short-term (CIDA: We got FACked!, FAC: DFATD, not DeFeATeD!) and medium-term (calling all pundits), it isn’t, in my opinion, anything close to the greatest threat facing the new DFATD in the long-term.

To borrow a cliché, CIDA and FAC are two unique cultures separated by a common language around Canada, government and internationalism.

Does FAC have culture?

I know, it comes as a shock to most people. But I mean small “c” culture, not Cultural Affairs-type culture, although many of them have that too. So, let’s look at that culture. And, reader beware, I might even say some nice things about them.… Read the rest

CIDA, DFAIT and what’s on the DMs’ minds…

PolyWogg.ca
March 27 2013

As with all posts on this site, my views are my own and obviously not that of my paycheque provider. Not that anyone complained, or that I’m being overly “critical” of decisions, as the reality of most decisions made by governments when it comes to structural changes is that most are simply that — choices. They are not “good” or “bad”, they simply have pros and cons. And just as with a hiring decision where one’s strength in being decisive can also be a weakness by being inflexible or quick to judge, the Deputy Ministers and Associates working on what the new merger will look like have a bunch of decisions to make, and most of the options have strengths that may turn out to be weaknesses or weaknesses that may turn out to be strengths.

Since many of you asked, and don’t have much experience thinking “structurally” or “corporately”, here is my guess of some of the things occupying their attention this week.

Job chaos

I may depress a lot of people with identifying this first, but it would be the most emotionless automaton working at that level who wouldn’t be affected by the chaos that just invaded their orbit.… Read the rest

A dark blue suit with Birkenstocks

PolyWogg.ca
March 22 2013

Each year, thousands of people compete for jobs at the Department of Foreign Affairs. But, while many are called, few are chosen (100-ish). Yet yesterday, DFAIT’s ranks swelled by 1800 people, most of whom no doubt greeted the news with a lot less enthusiasm than DFAIT’s normal hirings. With the announcement that CIDA was being “folded” into DFAIT, many are stressed that this sounds a death knell for development, that all principles of development will go out the window, and that CIDA will essentially disappear. Fortunately, the announcements of CIDA’s death may be a bit premature.

Some broader context, timelines up until 1998

Prior to WWII, most “economic development history” consisted of experiences with colonization, not development assistance as we know it. International development in its modern form actually began with Foreign Affairs types. When WWII ended, and reconstruction began in Europe, people thought, “Hey, we just need to do the same thing in developing countries, and it will work.” They neglected to take into account that European reconstruction worked because Europe already had working systems that produced the development in the first place, experience in managing it, and a tax and resource base to sustain it. Not surprisingly, the same methods didn’t work in developing countries and the early 1960s saw those same DFAIT types who had been struggling with a lack of success starting to think there was a need for separate organizational entities to deal with this type of issue.… Read the rest