JL
NOVEMBER 2017
Personal Challenges, Tribulations and Travels
December 8, 2017
This month I might be a little late to getting to write about the month of November (my apologies for those of you actually keeping up with this), but with the amount of personal challenges I faced this month in the Netherlands, sitting down to actually re-hash the negative has been tough. As a generally positive person always trying to make lemonade when life gives me lemons, when the going gets rough, I push through it in stride. This month, however, for the most part, it felt as though a higher power was beating me with a stick every day trying to bash my inner positive tendencies.
BUT-- For the sake of those who are going to read this, I won't talk about all of those negatives. I'll keep you apprised of the good, exciting things that are happening in my life.
This month I traveled to Belgium, the Czech Republic and France (some solo trips, some to visit sweet friends from back home), finished more classes, connected with someone who works for the Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, had my first visitor come to the Netherlands, found a potential way to give back to the community I live in, and determined what I think I will do my Master's thesis on.
To summarize my travels, I really did enjoy my weekend trips away from my reality in the Netherlands. Prior to this month, I think I had barely hit traveling to 5 countries total in my lifetime, but managed to check off three more this month! To my surprise, normally the countries I wasn't expecting much from visiting, I ended up loving. With that said, from here on out while I am in Europe, I plan on trying to keep as much of an open mind as possible when it comes to my travels. I've attached a few of my many photos from the various places I visited above.
I started off the month on a high note meeting with Johan Gietman. Johan works for the Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and is also a member of the Transportation Lean Form, a network of transportation leaders around the world that my previous boss at CDOT, Gary Vansuch created. Before I moved to the Netherlands, Gary connected us and we corresponded quite a bit via email, but it was even more refreshing to bounce ideas off of each other and discuss how our respective government agencies work within our countries, how to innovate for the future, and ultimately make a difference in person.
My last official week of the month of November, I had a good friend of mine from LSU come into Amsterdam for the weekend. Because I am a bit of a homebody, which I am realizing more and more as time passes while I am here, it was so great to have someone I shared so many memories with in college brighten my entire month.
Towards the end of the month of November (and breaking into the early first week of December), I've been grappling a lot with how exactly I can make an impact on this country while I live here. Its always been in my nature to be mindful of the communities I live in, recognize inequalities, and try my hardest to help in any way that I can. To me, serving others is my number one priority in life. As a friend, mentor, student colleague, and in general as a person.
My Action Planning class allowed me to understand a region of Rotterdam I was unfamiliar with. Feijenoord is a neighborhood 20 minutes away from mine by bike where most of the residents live in social housing, 75 percent of them do not have jobs, and the majority of the community is not Dutch; they are of Turkish, Surinamese and Moroccan decent. During our Action Planning period, we conducted interviews with residents in the neighborhood to assess needs for the community. After a few days worth of interviews, it was very clear that women in the neighborhood were normally less likely than their male counterparts to have a job, but these women wanted to find ways to help their families and be leaders in Feijenoord.
After spending so much time in my first few years working with Women's Global Empowerment Fund, an organization that provides social, economic, and political programs for women in post-conflict areas of Northern Uganda, my wheels started turning. How exactly could I establish a similar network to empower the women of Feijenoord? With refining and more thought refining, and the help of my very smart peers in my Master's program, we came up with a sustainable leadership program framework for women to participate in, Vrowen Bouwen Feijenoord, which translated in English from Dutch, means Building Women in Feijenoord.
This is a work in progress at the moment currently, so if you have questions about it, feel free to ask! Because the best common language for the women is Dutch, I've took it upon myself to register for formal Dutch classes so I can learn the language better in working proficiency (thanks for the awesome Christmas gift, Mom and Dad). I'd love input, thoughts, ideas, and maybe some helping hands here and there. Because with advocacy projects like this, it takes a village!
As for my thesis, I am hoping to hop on some research currently being conducted by my university that is funded by UN Habitat and GIZ Germany that looks at analyzing the capacity metropolitan governments have on planning, steering, and managing developments. I hope to specifically focus on how transportation infrastructure planning differs from the metropolitan level of cities in the United States and European countries (likely the Netherlands, Germany and maybe Austria based on my connections), and ultimately offer recommendations based on the development of the Metropolitan Governance Capacity Assessment Method tool.
This means I may get to come home sooner than I thought I would be, which I am pretty darn excited about, AND this research truly reflects my true purpose in moving to the Netherlands to pursue Master's degree here; harnessing innovation that I can bring back to the United States for my future career.
This month I decided that I wanted to end my blog with a little bit of words of wisdom from a poet, Rupi Kaur, to leave you all with. Her words incapsulate what I think we all need to be reminded on occasion. While we may be caught up in the craziness of our day to day lives, our lives have much more of an impact. Being cognizant and aware of our actions and how they influence others is so important. Every thing we do in our lives deserves a little ounce of love here and there.
