Archive for Rachel Mendleson
When reality bites
Recessions hit young people hardest—even long after they’re over
During his final year at the University of Ottawa, Justin Cantin had one goal for his first job after graduation: not to wear a uniform. Ideally, he hoped to put his undergraduate degree in history to work in a museum or doing research. But after graduating last December, in the aftermath of the most severe recession in decades, reality hit. With $45,000 in loans, the 23-year-old moved back in with his mom in Mississauga, Ont., and started sending out resumés. He soon broadened his search to include part-time jobs, factory positions—“whatever would give me a paycheque,” he says. Last week, he landed a warehouse gig in Waterloo, Ont. Though relocating for a manual labour job is not something he ever imagined he’d do, he says, “It’s better than nothing.”
As Cantin struggles to adjust his expectations, he can take comfort, however cold, in the knowledge that many of his peers are doing the same. Though it’s been months since Canada’s economy returned to growth, recessions have a way of bearing down hard on youth, even long after they’re officially over. Predominantly employed in industries like retail and food service, which depend on consumer demand, or in unions where seniority rules, youth tend to be first on the chopping block when the economy goes south. This time was no different: since October 2008, more than 190,000 jobs for young people have disappeared; unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds rose to 16.3 per cent in August 2009, almost double the overall rate.
Although jobs are slowly coming back—as of February, youth unemployment had dropped to 15.2 per cent—what’s on offer is hardly the stuff from which middle-class careers are made. Thanks to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, hiring freezes and the delayed retirement of workers, for many the reality is a spell of unemployment or a low-paying gig—both of which can have lasting consequences, derailing careers for years to come. While it’s impossible to know how much their future will be shaped by the Great Recession, one thing is clear: the generation raised to believe in the limitlessness of their own potential has just been dealt a very unlucky blow.
Strictly in terms of unemployment, this recession has not been as cruel to youth as other downturns. In August 1992, unemployment for those aged 15 to 24 shot up to 18.4 per cent; in the early ’80s, it reached 20.6 per cent. But according to Armine Yalnizyan, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, it’s the kind of jobs that were lost that’s cause for concern. Whereas the recession in the early ’80s replaced full-time jobs with part-time jobs, and the one in the ’90s replaced traditional employment with self-employment, this downturn “seems to be replacing permanent jobs with temporary jobs,” she says. “Where is the next generation of middle-class jobs going to come from?” she asks. “There’s just nothing coming up on the menu.”
The best way for youth to survive the hostile job market, say experts, is to wait it out by investing in school or volunteer positions. The trouble is that with median family incomes slipping, indebtedness at record highs and boomer parents struggling, many youth can’t afford to delay working. To make matters worse, says David Green, an economist at the University of British Columbia, the social safety net is not what it once was. While 83 per cent of those who were unemployed at the beginning of the recession in the early ’90s qualified for jobless benefits, this time only 43 per cent qualified. And incomes aren’t what they used to be either: though new workers began to gain ground again in the mid-’90s, at the start of the recent recession, says Green, they were still facing real wages below those of their counterparts in the early ’80s.
For youth who are unable, or unwilling, to prolong their entry into the job market, breaking in during a downturn is an uphill battle. When Amanda, who asked that Maclean’s not use her last name, got her undergraduate degree in math last June, she wanted to get a job as an analyst. But after four months of unemployment, she took an entry-level position at a Toronto IT firm. While her friends who graduated with similar credentials just a few years earlier started out making about $40,000, she’s earning $30,000.
In fact, most young people entering the job market now are making less than peers who found jobs two or three years ago. “And that lasts for quite a while,” says Paul Beaudry, Canada Research Chair in Macroeconomics at UBC. A study of Canadian men who graduated with B.A.s over almost 20 years found that, on average, those who begin their careers in down times tend to do so at smaller firms that pay less, suffering an eight to nine per cent income hit. And it takes 10 years to catch up to those who graduated in boom times. Worse still, for those who graduated from less prestigious universities with degrees in lower-paying fields, the scarring effect on their earning potential “sort of remains permanent,” says Phil Oreopoulos, a University of Toronto economics professor who co-authored the study.
The prospects are bleaker for those without post-secondary education. “Employers out there, they’re asking for everything—the moon and the stars,” says Joan Gardener, project administrator at the Mississauga, Ont.-based Youth Community Connections, a government-funded program that serves out-of-work young people. For those who do manage to secure employment, the erosion of high-paying, middle-class manufacturing jobs means it’s tougher to get ahead. “Think about it as a career ladder with the rings in the middle all being missing,” says Morley Gunderson, an economics professor at U of T. “You don’t have a way to start at the bottom and move up anymore.”
Why it’s so hard to fire bad teachers
Most principals would rather hide or transfer incompetent teachers than try to oust them
What it took for one Ontario principal to rid her school of an incompetent teacher is a process she’s not fond of revisiting. It began in September 2007, when she inherited a teacher whose performance was already under review. Despite a file thick with evidence of inadequacy, the principal helped draft an “improvement plan”—a requirement in the provincial Education Act—and dipped into school funds to pay for substitutes while the struggling teacher attended workshops.
But, says the junior school principal, it soon emerged that there was “a serious, basic problem of not understanding”—which continued even after the teacher knew she was under review. Students shuffled through reading levels without proof of assessment. Parents complained about spelling test words that weren’t sent home. And the teacher submitted grades for computer class when, in fact, her “inability to use technology” meant the monitors “were rarely turned on,” says the principal. Still, it took months of paperwork and meetings with union representatives before she was able to inch even one step closer to dismissal.
“It was very upsetting,” she says. “I wouldn’t choose to do it again unless I absolutely had to.”
Inadequate teaching has been shown to contribute to dropout rates, low test scores and a dislike for school. So severe are the implications, says Brendan Menuey, an assistant principal in Virginia, that poor teaching is tantamount to “educational malpractice.” Yet in Canada, teacher incompetence prompts so few administrators to pursue termination that the Ontario principal insisted that not even the name of her school board be published, because it would almost certainly identify her.
According to Barrie Bennett, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the dismissal process is so onerous, the risk of reprisal from teachers’ unions so great, that “most principals find it’s not worth the effort.” Instead, they approve transfers, or hide struggling teachers where their deficiencies can go unnoticed. The result however, is this: a system that keeps incompetent teachers in the classroom.
The fact that more bad teachers aren’t being fired is “a problem that nobody wants to talk about,” says Menuey, who authored a 2007 study on the subject. Despite research indicating that about five per cent of every workforce is incompetent, he uncovered a truth about his district he describes as “scandalous”: less than one-tenth of one per cent of tenured teachers were being dismissed annually for poor performance.
When viewed through this lens, the Canadian numbers are even more damning. Of the roughly 200,000 educators licensed by the Ontario College of Teachers to teach, only 27 have been terminated due to poor performance since 2004—an annual average of just 0.002 per cent. In the past five years, not a single permanent teacher has been dismissed for incompetence in the largest school boards in Montreal and Winnipeg; Saskatoon Public Schools has terminated just one; and in Edmonton Public Schools, says a spokeswoman, “very few if any” have been let go.
Dollar for dollar, a B.A. is better
Grad studies are on the rise, but the payoff in cash is small
More Canadians are pursuing graduate studies than ever before. Even prior to the recession—university enrolments tend to spike during economic downturns—a significant shift was already under way: according to Statistics Canada, 32 per cent more people had master’s degrees in 2006 than in 2001, and 30 per cent more had doctorates. But, as a recent study by the C.D. Howe Institute shows, going to grad school doesn’t always pay.
While the desire to pad the mind, rather than the wallet, is what motivates many of those who get advanced degrees, it may still come as a surprise that a simple bachelor’s is a far more fruitful economic investment. According to “Extra Earning Power: The Financial Returns to University Education in Canada,” throughout their careers, men can expect an average annual return (after taxes) of 12 per cent on what they paid for tuition, books and living expenses in undergrad; for women, who have less lucrative opportunities with just a high school diploma, it’s 14 per cent. For master’s degrees, meanwhile, the annual rate of return drops to 2.9 per cent for men, and five per cent for women. The payback is smaller still for Ph.D.s: women can anticipate a 3.6 per cent return, while men actually emerge in the red.
As author François Vaillancourt explains, though grad school often unlocks added earning potential, due to “very high” costs of tuition, living expenses and income lost, master’s degrees and Ph.D.s don’t necessarily translate into bigger bank accounts. For society, the costs are even more significant. When men get master’s degrees, government, taxpayers and universities actually take a financial hit. But despite negligible and, in some cases, negative value to society, Vaillancourt points out that there’s more to determining worth than dollars and cents. “One thing we cannot measure is the content of work,” he says. However, in the case of degrees for which taxpayers, in the big scheme of things, seem to be carrying the load, he suggests, “Perhaps society should ask itself, ‘Why?’ ”
Campus radicals
The far right is gaining a foothold in U.S. universities
United States college campuses, which in the ’60s gave rise to a generation of civil rights activists and anti-war protesters, are not traditional launching pads for the far right. But this year, chapters of Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), which stands opposed to “radical multiculturalism, political correctness, racial preferences, mass immigration, and socialism,” have spread to eight campuses—evidence, say experts, of a growing fringe movement.
In fact, buoyed by the economic downturn, the election of a black, liberal president and a strong undercurrent of nativism, right-wing extremism in general is gaining traction. But even before the U.S. economy tanked, the far right was ramping up. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), between 2000 and 2008 the number of hate groups ballooned from 602 to 926.
Project director Mark Potok says immigration from Mexico “has clearly been the biggest driver.” (Immigration debates have also been credited for the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, and xenophobic violence in Russia.) Along with cadres of neo-Nazis, Potok says extreme nativist groups like the website Vdare, tellingly named after Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, are being “aided and abetted by people in positions of power.” (A lengthy archive of former presidential adviser Pat Buchanan’s writings can be found there.)
On campuses, the far-right movement can also be explained by the stinging defeat of Republicans last November. Increasingly, says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in California, right-wing college students “feel both personally and socially disenfranchised.”
Washington, D.C., student Kevin DeAnna, who founded YWC last fall, echoes this sentiment: “I’m just sick of seeing conservatives being pushed around.” At the same time, says Levin, violence from the left, such as that which prevented virulent anti-immigration lobbyist Tom Tancredo from speaking at a recent YWC event, fuels “an undercurrent of resentment that allows some of the worst demagoguery on the right to take root.”
How real a threat the burgeoning far right poses remains to be seen. As Chip Berlet, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America, points out, while “radical ideology and violent methodology sometimes intersect, they sometimes don’t.” DeAnna denies that his call to preserve “Western heritage” has racial undertones (“We have a black [member] at MIT,” he told Maclean’s). Still, the SPLC says this new group is one it will be watching closely.
What your test scores don’t say about you
A new study finds negative stereotypes can mask people’s academic abilities
Consider the following scenario: university admissions officers have narrowed applications for the final place in an engineering program down to two. The candidates have similar credentials and identical test scores; the only difference is that one is a woman and the other is a man. Who should they choose?
The answer may come as a surprise. According to a paper slated for publication in Psychological Science, the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about the intellectual capacity of women in math and sciences likely led the female applicant to underperform. Though her test scores may be the same as those of her male counterpart, the woman has a “significant untapped potential,” says University of Waterloo professor Steven Spencer, who co-authored the study with Stanford University’s Greg Walton. Put simply, she’s the better choice.
Test scores and grades have long shown an academic achievement gap between genders and ethnicities. In the past, this discrepancy has been explained by factors like poverty and poor schooling, which, it has been believed, lead to real differences in ability. Latent Ability: Grades and Tests Systematically Underestimate the Intellectual Ability of Negatively Stereotyped Students makes a new and very different case for affirmative action.
While Spencer and Walton don’t deny that socio-economic factors play a role in academic performance, their research, gleaned from a compendium of studies that include 19,000 students in Canada, France, Germany, Sweden and the U.S., has identified stereotype threat as another cause.
According to Spencer, stereotype threat comes into play whenever “you feel you can be judged based on a negative stereotype about your group.” As he explains, for non-Asian minorities and women (in quantitative fields), the belief that they don’t belong, or that the odds are stacked against their success, causes these students to “become excessively careful” when answering questions, a strategy that’s particularly ill advised on standardized tests. At the same time, he says efforts to “tamp down thinking about a stereotype … actually eats up a lot of their cognitive resources,” reducing the capacity of short-term memory. The feeling of belonging may be an abstract concept, but the implications are very real.
On the SAT, for example, the professors say black and Hispanic students score about 40 points below their true ability, and on the math portion, women score about 20 points under where they should. And it’s not just on college entrance exams. Spencer says that stereotype threat in high schools and even junior highs mean grades and test scores could underestimate the ability of these students for the majority of their academic careers.
But there is hope. Compared to factors like poverty and poor schooling, says Spencer, reducing stereotype threat is relatively easy. Simple interventions, such as telling college students that there is no group differences on a particular test or getting junior high kids to write about values that are important to them can “make a big difference in performance,” he says. To eliminate it completely, he says academic institutions must work to identify at-risk groups and develop long-term strategies to make them feel accepted.
“That feeling of belonging is really the antidote to this [belief] that you’re going to be judged based on stereotypes about your group,” says Spencer. In the meantime however, he says admissions officers should take stereotype threat into account when making decisions-not because women and minorities need a boost to succeed, but because tests hide the fact that they already have.
The End: John Patrick McKendy 1949-2008
He was a peace-loving professor who dedicated his life to understanding why people commit violence
John Patrick McKendy was born on Aug. 21, 1949, in Bathurst, N.B., to Arthur and Bernadette McKendy, who raised their seven children in a devoutly Roman Catholic home. The second oldest, John, stood out from his siblings as “the sensitive one” with a “quiet, almost brooding” nature, says his brother Mike. While Arthur earned a living as a civil servant, the boys were often cast outdoors to invent their own fun. “John was the conscience,” says Mike, “He wouldn’t let us get too far astray.”
Though Bernadette, who later became a children’s librarian, impressed the importance of education on her four boys and three girls equally, says Mike, “we all knew that John would go beyond our achievements.” His deep intellect and focus won him top marks. In his teens, he earned his amateur radio licence—perhaps early evidence of a desire to listen to others. But despite the accolades he got from school, or from Boy Scouts and Air Cadets, John “shunned honour and recognition,” says Mike, recalling how his “painfully shy” brother preferred to soak in the action from the periphery. “He certainly didn’t do it for the badge.”
After high school, John followed in his older brother Charles’s footsteps and enrolled at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., where he excelled. Occasionally, John would hitchhike home to Bathurst with his friends, who, like him, “were the sensitive type,” says Mike. The Kent State shooting in 1970, in which four students were killed, was pivotal for John. Though he retained his faith in God, he chafed at the rigidity of institutions like the Catholic Church. By the time he was in Toronto earning his Ph.D. in sociology, he had gravitated to the more peaceful, meditative doctrine of Quakerism. The notion that “people are not inherently bad,” says friend Vince Zelazny, became intertwined with his academic pursuits.
John met his wife, Carol Wakeham, at Mike’s wedding in New Jersey in 1976. He was the best man, and she was the maid of honour and sister of the bride. Despite their differences—she took charge, while he was more laissez-faire—theirs was an attraction, recalls Mike, that “stood out, even against the focus on us that day.” After a year-long, cross-border courtship, they were married. When his daughters Colleen and Laura were born, John fostered an encouraging environment, where there were never winners or losers. “They adored him,” says Mike.
Among the professors at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, where he taught throughout his career, John was a “peacemaker,” with a knack for “dealing with wounded egos,” says long-time colleague Sylvia Hale. In his field, the research he conducted with men who had abused their partners, and the workshops he facilitated with Dorchester Penitentiary inmates, was considered radical. Though he “had never been violent in his life,” John conceded to the men that “all of us have been abusive,” says Sylvia. Their stories strengthened his belief in guidance instead of punishment.
Though John was passionate about research, his first love was teaching. Clad in sneakers, jeans, a collared shirt and sweater, the professor who refused to be called “Doctor” inspired his students. In early 1994, Dawne Clarke was a single mother who had recently escaped an abusive relationship. As she struggled to hold her newborn daughter while taking notes in John’s class, he scooped up the baby and finished the lecture. Recalls Dawne, “He didn’t even break stride.”
It was a desire to understand the causes of violence, and hunger for travel, that led John to volunteer in Burundi in the summer of 2007 and again in 2008. During the six-week stints, he helped construct an AIDS clinic, and took part in alternatives to violence workshops with people who were both perpetrators and victims of the Rwandan genocide. “He was right in the middle of everything, relating to everyone,” says coordinator Dave Zarembka. John applied for a sabbatical, and was planning to return in January on an open ticket.
John’s daughter Laura had been married for less than a year when her relationship “crashed completely,” says a friend, and she moved in with her dad. He revealed snippets of the trauma to colleagues, and put his trip to Africa on hold. At a recent Quaker meeting, John prompted those gathered to pray for Laura’s husband, Nicholas Wade Baker. On Friday, Oct. 31, a violent attack occurred. Police have released few details, but they believe Nick assaulted a woman, whom friends and family identify as Laura, and killed John in his home. On Saturday, Nick’s body was found in a rented car, an apparent suicide. John McKendy was 59.
Diversity or Death
Some firms are slowly realizing they’ll need minorities to survive
When Vikram Ahluwalia immigrated to Canada four years ago, he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t getting any job offers. In India, he had spent the better part of a decade working his way up to middle management at a multinational packaged goods company, so he knew he was more than qualified to fill the positions he applied to in Canada. But he wasn’t getting past the interviews. Finally, a headhunter told him what was turning prospective employers off: his turban and his beard. Though it was an emotionally difficult decision — Ahluwalia is Sikh and had never cut his hair — he took her advice and removed his turban and trimmed his beard. “I could see the impact right away,” he says. “Within weeks, I had two major offers.”
Canadian corporations are not nearly as advanced as we like to think they are when it comes to workplace diversity. But that’s changing quickly. Not because executives are particularly broad-minded or sensitive to discrimination, but because they’re finding that the very future of their business now depends on hiring immigrants. Currently, one-fifth of our country’s workers are immigrants, and by 2011, it’s estimated that new Canadians will account for all net labour-force growth. In industries where the labour market is particularly tight, such as the Alberta energy sector, immigrants already account for almost all growth. While prior generations of new Canadians complained of underemployment, the latest wave of highly skilled immigrants is finding that in many sectors, they have plenty of options to choose from. In such a market, if they get the impression that your firm doesn’t welcome their culture or religious beliefs, they’ll simply look elsewhere. The shift is “quite dramatic,” says Joerg Dietz, an international business professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business. “If you don’t start working on diversity management today, you might not be around tomorrow.”
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Michael Bach, national director of diversity and inclusion at KPMG, freely admits that when his accounting firm began to explore how to tap into the immigrant workforce three years ago, “it wasn’t so much about the right thing to do as it was the right thing to do for our business.” In the next decade, 30 per cent of the firm’s partners will reach the mandatory retirement age. To position itself as “the employer of choice for all people,” he says KPMG has offered diversity training to managers, created an international club, which acts as a support network for new Canadians, and in several offices it has added a “reflection room” that can be used for prayer. Visible minorities now make up more than a quarter of employees.
Likewise, the economic argument for attracting and retaining immigrants is “a no-brainer” for Wardrop Engineering Inc., says vice-president of human resources James Popel. The multidisciplinary consulting firm has more than doubled its staff in the past five years, and is looking to boost numbers by another 25 per cent this year, but he says “there aren’t enough applicants out there to fill all the roles.” To meet its needs, the Winnipeg-based company recruits from agencies that assist immigrants with their job search. It also facilitates the accreditation of internationally educated engineers, and provides on-site English language instruction and cross-cultural training. At its Pickering, Ont., office, there’s a dedicated prayer facility that was created at the behest of employees. If similar spaces are requested elsewhere, says Popel, “we’ll adjust.”
For companies that are only now waking up to the need to reach out to a more diverse pool of employees, the learning curve will be steep, says Nadir Shirazi, president of Multifacet Diversity Solutions Ltd. Shirazi says the first step was cultural integration. Now, he assists businesses with what he calls “Diversity 2.0,” which is more about accommodating religion. “Where many older workers may not bring [religion] forward, many younger workers know that if they’re not treated in a certain fashion, they can go somewhere else,” he says. Just ask Ali, a Winnipeg-born Muslim who markets specialized medical devices for a company located on the outskirts of Toronto. The 25-year-old, who requested anonymity, recently started looking for a new job, largely because he says he feels “alienated” at work. Although his daily prayers take “far less time than a cigarette break,” there’s not an appropriate space, and taking time out to drive to a nearby mosque has been discouraged. Though his employer knows he fasts during Ramadan, he says he feels pressure from co-workers to attend corporate lunches, and last year, he had to work on Id al-Fitr, the celebration that concludes the fast, because he had a deadline to meet. When choosing his next job, he says if the right company offers religious accommodation, it “could make for an easy decision.”
Helping the world. And me
Is volunteering about saving the world or enhancing a resumé?
Sara Minogue went to Tanzania expecting to make a contribution. A journalist with several years’ experience, she was drawn to a government-funded opportunity to raise the profile of human rights issues. Journalists for Human Rights, the Toronto-based NGO offering the eight-month program, sent her to Dar es Salaam to teach reporters how to effectively report on abuses. But when Minogue, who was 28 at the time, arrived at her placement in the capital city in 2006, she was struck by “how ridiculous” it was for her to be in a position of authority. The week-long pre-departure training JHR had provided touched on culture shock, human rights theory and the West African media, but left her with “very little clue about where I was going,” she says. As it turned out, many of her colleagues at the Media Institute of Southern Africa had university degrees, and all of them knew more about the human rights abuses in Tanzania than she did, she says. “I felt extremely silly and embarrassed.” Within two months, Minogue had quit. Other than writing a report for JHR, she says she spent the rest of her time “hiking around and hanging out” on Canadian taxpayers’ dime.
Canadians have a long tradition of sending youth to developing countries to build schools, work in orphanages and fight AIDS. Since 1960, an estimated 65,000 have gone overseas through the country’s major volunteer-sending organizations, and countless others have participated in church and corporate projects or internships sponsored by government and universities. But evidence is emerging that raises serious concerns about what these opportunities have come to mean. In regions plagued by issues that decades of international aid have been unable to resolve, it is often difficult for unskilled volunteers and interns to be anything more than tourists. And experts worry that instead of fostering cross-cultural understanding, the experiences may, in some instances, have the opposite effect — reinforce negative stereotypes in young Canadians, and breed resentment in the communities that host them.
Spending a summer saving the world has never been easier for socially engaged youth, provided they (or their parents) can pay. Even if they don’t qualify for a funded placement, an Internet search for “volunteer abroad” reveals thousands of opportunities, which range from a few weeks to many months, and can easily cost more than a year’s university tuition. “Ironically, these types of opportunities are much more accessible to rich people than to poor people,” says Josh Ruxin, an assistant public health professor at Columbia University who runs three development projects in Rwanda. His interns, who must pay their own way, spend about $6,000 for a four- to six-month placement. The increasing demand to “make a difference” (or at least feel as if you are) has led to a proliferation of private operators selling volunteer opportunities in far-flung locations. African Impact, for instance, advertises a lengthy list of “exciting and rewarding” programs. For US$2,300, participants can spend a month coaching football in Zambia, working with HIV/AIDS orphans in Kenya, or teaching disadvantaged children in South Africa.
But what inspires idealistic twentysomethings to lend a hand often has less to do with philanthropy and more to do with “personal gain,” according to Rebecca Tiessen, a Dalhousie University professor examining the trend. Tiessen is one of two researchers conducting the study, “Creating Global Citizens? The Impact of Learning/Volunteer Programs Abroad.” Slated to wrap up in 2011, it is a first in its attempt to evaluate the implications of these programs through interviews with participants and host organizations in Malawi, South Africa, Peru, Guatemala, India and Jamaica. Though preliminary, the findings suggest these opportunities have become a “product” that can be purchased and cashed in for course credit or a line on a resumé. “There are fewer people saying, ‘I’m volunteering because it’s the right thing to do, it makes me feel good and I’m dedicated to social justice,’ ” says Tiessen. “There’s a more selfish or egotistical nature to the reasons.”
Before Kate Daley started her master’s degree last year, she shelled out $2,500 (not including airfare) to spend eight weeks in northern Ghana, helping out in an HIV/AIDS clinic and teaching at a school through Volunteer Abroad. Other than some small breakthroughs she made with the kids, the 25-year-old describes the opportunity as “more of an education for me.” It wasn’t Daley’s first time in a developing country. Similarly, the majority of the young people Tiessen interviewed had had more than one international volunteer experience. But even so, “the emphasis was still on how they could learn, how it would be useful for them,” says Tiessen. In the 30 pre-departure interviews she conducted with young Canadians about their motivations, “career” or “skills development” was mentioned 40 times — the most frequently cited response.
