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Sustainability in International Education: Interview with Michael Despines

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Michael Despines, Guest Blogger

Today’s guest post is by the very talented Michael Despines, Sustainability Advocate. I had the pleasure of meeting Michael at the School for International Training in the early 90s. This past year, Michael served as the keynote speaker at the Connecticut State University System’s International Education Conference. His multimedia presentation was talked about for weeks!  He was incredibly effective at breaking down very complicated issues (climate change/sustainability and how it impacts the global community) into digestible morsels, while relaying individual action plans for participants.
For today’s guest blog, I asked Michael about how the crisis facing our planet is impacting communities around the world. Please enjoy his thought provoking responses and be sure to check out his incredible bio below. Michael is available to presentation on your organization.  Click here for more information.

Melibee Global (MG): Michael, what prompted you to shift your career and personal focus from international relief work to environmental sustainability ?

Michael Despines (MD): Early on in my career overseas I realized that our work was to help poor countries become economic replicates of the United States or Europe.  Intuitively, I sensed that our society was not sustainable and I began a lifelong study on issues related to sustainability.  The more I learned, the more my sense of concern and urgency grew.  Over time, I decided to return to the U.S. and work on educating people about these issues and promoting a prosperous and sustainable society.

MG: Melibee Global is a blog that focuses on international education. In this field, there has been a lot of buzz about the “Green Passport” program. Are we moving in the right direction with this program?  How can those of us who plan programs around the world (study/internships/volunteer abroad) be more effective in minimizing or offsetting the carbon footprint?

MD: Your question is a profound one.  I am a passionate believer in the value of travel abroad – my overseas experience completely transformed me and opened untold worlds of intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth.  That being said, international travel has a tremendous cost and recreational air travel will soon be an anachronism.  The Green Passport program is right on – it places travel in proper perspective.  Travel must be revered and respected for the extreme privilege that it is.  The traveler must understand the high cost to the planet of such an experience and be committed to making the changes needed to live his or her life, day in and day out, in balance with nature.  Carbon offset projects rarely produce the promised reductions – do not rely on them.

MG: As individual travelers, what are the changes we should be making to impact sustainability positively?

MD: Use public transportation as much as you can.  Drive as little as possible.  Support local business and local food suppliers.  Carry your own water.  Avoid plastic.  Be aware of your choices and their impacts.  Take your time.  Much of the worst damage we do to the planet takes place when we rush or when we are short on time (eating fast food, buying bottled water, using throw away goods, etc.)

MG: How do you address those who say that climate change is a fairy tale?

MD: The debate was over 20 years ago.  Every, and I mean every, credible scientific body in the world has signed on in support. Every government in the world, including the United States under George Bush, has publicly acknowledged that man-made climate change is a fact.  Get over it.  Climate change deniers now fall among those who believe that world is flat, or that man did not go to the moon.

MG: Can you recommend any books for our readers?

MD: Hmmm, so many.  “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability” by James Gustave Speth. Read this book and you will understand all the key environmental, social, political, and economic issues, problems and solutions related to creating a sustainable society.  “An Agenda for a New Economy” by David Korten.  A thin book that changed how I live my life.  Here is a longer list.

MG: You spent many years working with the International Rescue Committee in Africa.  How are issues with climate change specifically impacting this region of the world?

MD: The poorest people in the world in both Africa and Asia are being hit hardest by the impacts of climate change.  Developing countries are heavily reliant on agriculture – the dramatic shift in climate is causing more frequent floods in some areas and extreme droughts in others.  Either way yields are dropping.  Hunger is rising.  Each year there are an additional 150,000 deaths from malaria as the rising temperatures are allowing malaria laden mosquitoes to move into new areas.  Women are particularly vulnerable –  they have the least access to education and information about how to respond to climate change.  Most farmers are actually women so they suffer most when crops fail.  Women also take care of the children and the household so they are least able to flee the rising number of extreme weather events caused by climate change.

MG: Is it too late for us to change to deal with climate change?  Is it too late to create a sustainable society?

MD: The way we live our life right now in America is taking us on a path to societal suicide.  Our demands on the planet are overwhelming the planet’s life support systems.  The signs are everywhere.  Temperatures rising.  Fish stocks collapsing.  Forests disappearing.  Water tables dropping.  That is the bad news.  The good news is that all the solutions are here, right now, today.  We don’t need any new technology to create a world that is prosperous and in balance with nature.  We simply have to make different choices.  The future can be astounding.  Really.  In my talks I help map out both the bad and the good and the potential that awaits us.  But the clock is ticking, and we must start making these changes NOW.  Mother Nature will not wait much longer before she takes corrective action.

MG: Before we wrap up, I’d like to switch gears for a moment. You are an accomplished photographer. Tell our readers about how you got started with this hobby.

MD: As a child I was always crazy about animals: my room was full of stuffed toy animals and animal picture books.  Every Sunday night I would anxiously await the next episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.  I had seen every animal documentary made.  So, when I went to Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer I bought my first cheap Nikon camera.  Over the years I gradually taught myself how to take a decent photo and I went on safari every chance I could.  Connecting with nature is essential.  Nature nutures.

MG: Thank you, Michael, for sharing your wisdom with our readers.

Michael Despines' safari photo: Zebras

About the Author: Michael’s 17 years of experience with the International Rescue Committee in Africa inspired him to act on behalf of some of the people who are most negatively impacted by decisions made in the west. Michael worked as a senior manager, strategist, and advocate for several international relief and development organizations.  As Regional Director for the International Rescue Committee, he supervised programs in Rwanda, Burundi, The Republic of Congo, The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Tanzania.  As the Asia Regional Director for CHF International Michael supervised community development programs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Mongolia.  Michael spent six years in eastern DRC as the country director overseeing a broad range of humanitarian and development programs.  He has also worked for the International Medical Corps in Angola, and Action against Hunger-USA in Rwanda.  He began his overseas work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Gabon. Over the last several years Michael has focused on promoting sustainable development in the United States.  He has worked with Environment America, Clean Air-Cool Planet, and spent a year with Friends of the Earth advocating for sound US policy to address the impacts of climate change and he co-authored a report on the risks associated with the use of carbon offsets.  He is currently the Vice President of International Programs at the Institute for Sustainable Communities,  Michael has conducted extensive reading and research on environmental science, climate science, energy technology, consumption, economics, and other topics related to sustainability.  Based on this research and life experience, Michael created “The American Dream – The World’s Nightmare,” a powerful presentation that he offers to high schools, colleges, universities, churches and other public venues to increase public awareness and action on these issues.  Michael also writes a blog called Sustainable Thoughts. Michael holds a B.S in Electrical Engineering, a B.A. in General Arts and Science, and a Masters in International Management. He is fluent in French and English.




Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC)

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Intercultural communication humor!

I am a passionate life long learner. This summer I am taking a graduate level class: The History of the South (that is, the South of the U.S.).  While I already have a Masters from the School for International Training, I am a firm believer that education is not a destination, but rather a life long journey that has ebbs and flows.  This will be my 2nd graduate level class in U.S. History – a subject that I am very curious about and one that directly relates to my work as an intercultural educator because it is important to know where the value structure of a country comes from to understand its culture.

Each summer I make a list of professional training opportunities to consider, and then I make a short list of what is “realistic” in terms of time, funding, and work/life balance. After careful consideration, I opted for the History course and the BEVI training for a variety of reasons.  However, if time and resources permitted, I would have liked to attended training at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland, Oregon, US.  In fact, I wish that the SIIC had a virtual training option for those of us who cannot easily get to the west coast!

SIIC has a 34 year history of providing professional development in intercultural communication. It is part of the Intercultural Communication Institute (ICI), a private, nonprofit foundation designed to foster an awareness and appreciation of cultural differences in both the international and domestic arenas.

Their workshops are appropriate for intercultural trainers, human resource and diversity managers, educators, international administrators and those who work across diverse teams.  In fact, it is really an appropriate training program for anyone who wants to learn more about building bridges among cultural differences as well as simply understanding why we are the way we are.

Their summer institute is offering four summer sessions this year including one, three and five day workshops.  Some of particular interest include:

New Narratives in Intercultural Education and Training - facilitated by Milton Bennett. This one excites me because I want to know what new models exist out there instead of recreating the same theories repeatedly. How can we look at the work that we do from a different lens?  And how could we miss an opportunity to learn from Milton Bennett?  He is a guru in our field!

Mapping the Intercultural Self: Using Visual Journaling to Create an Atlas of Experience – facilitated by Patricia (Patti) Digh and David Robinson.  This appeals to me because it is a unique way to explore culture.  Participants are instructed to bring art supplies – which sounds like a fabulous creative outlet when exploring your intercultural self. And I must add that one of the facilitators, Ms. Digh, sounds like an unbelievable woman! Anyone who writes a book about living with intention is a rock star in my humble opinion. Furthering her potential “rock star status” is that she lives in Asheville, North Carolina (US), one of the coolest places on our dear planet.

China: A Critical-Culture Briefing – facilitated by George Renwick. A dedicated training on China by one of the world’s leading experts on East/West cultural dialogue. What else do I need to say?  I simply will add that I met George Renwick years ago during my days at Cartus and learned more in a 20 minute conversation with him about China then I did in 4 years of college. Enough said!

While I won’t be able to attend SIIC this summer, I hope that you’ll consider doing so. And if you can’t get out to the west coast of the US this year, make sure to sit down and assess your professional development opportunities.  Whether it is traveling abroad, attending a conference, drilling down in a country specific training or making a list of books that will help you to grow as an educator and person, make sure to take the time to explore on your educational journey. Life is too short and too precious not to!




Cross-Cultural Counseling

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(Click on the book to preview/purchase.)

This past week has been a sharp reminder of the importance of learning and utilizing skills when counseling across cultures, particularly during a crisis. I worked with two students this past week who are both experiencing tremendous anxiety:  one because she is experiencing a challenging relationship with her parent here in the US, the second because she is too far from her family in Western Europe.

In each case I received a somewhat panicked email or phone call asking if I could meet on the same day, which is rather out of character for each of these young women.  Both were tearful, uncertain and confused.  Each was unsure of how much to share and how much I would or could, in turn, share with others.

These experiences reminded me of the value of a graduate class in Cross-Cultural Counseling that I took many years ago at the School for International Training.  The work of Dr. Paul Pedersen really stood out for me, as his readings were based on the simple idea that “since all behaviors are learned and displayed in a cultural context, accurate assessment, meaningful understanding and appropriate interventions are done from the perspective of the client’s cultural context.”  As an American counselor, I have to style switch to address each student’s concerns, sensitively ask questions to determine understanding, make sure that my listening skills are particularly fine tuned to “hear” what might not have been said directly, and be keenly aware of the non-verbals.

One of the potential challenges for an adviser is how to handle the hand off to formal counseling services. For many students, American or otherwise, confidentiality is of tremendous concern. Many international students (and their family members) are not aware that universities in the US are not able to disclose information about a student to family members and perhaps not even colleagues within the institution, due to a law called FERPA – The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. For the first student, who is not from Western Europe, this was of great concern. She was uncomfortable with the thought of her family finding out that she was seeking counseling due to her strained relationship with a parent. I spent a great deal of time explaining the law and thankfully, due to our two year history and time dedicated to trust building, she was willing to try the free counseling.

Pedersen’s work illustrates that “Competence is measured by your ability to know what your client is thinking but not saying.”  In this case, I knew that this student was thinking that people in the US talk about these things publicly, as they do in her own culture.  Because of this, I made sure to pull up the FERPA web page to show her, in writing, that this is a firm law in the US and to explain that laws are very seriously followed in this country.

This past week has reminded me that it is time again to revisit the important work of Dr. Paul Pedersen. If you are interested in learning more about cross-cultural counseling, Pedersen’s website offers valuable power point presentations and simple exercises that you can easily utilize for staff training.


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Reflections on Leaving and Returning to a Career in International Education

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Peace

Peace

Today’s blog posting is inspired by finding some of my grandfather’s writing.  My grandfather, who we lovingly called “Poppa”, was a closet writer.  He would grab lined paper and a bic pen, whenever he wasn’t talking your ear off , to write down his memories of his youth.  Poppa waited a lot longer than I did to start writing, but perhaps this is where my desire to blog comes from. I like to think so anyway.

Poppa grew up in New York City, in a part called “Hell’s Kitchen.” He lived on West 45th Street and 10th Avenue, a primarily Irish neighborhood, although he was of German and Latvian descent. This was the only part of town that his family seemed to be able to afford, and his father didn’t dare teach him German or Russian because he did not want his son to have an accent. Poppa wrote,  ”The area became known as Hell’s Kitchen, not because of its roughness but because the Irish couldn’t pronounce the word Heil.  A German named Heil had opened up a restaurant on West 39th Street somewhere between 10th and 11th Avenues. The restaurant was famous for its German food and the big spenders went there.  It was the thing to do after theater.”

I would listen to Poppa’s stories when I was small and as I reflect, I wonder if his stories about living in Hell’s Kitchen and the multicultural community of first generation families somehow influenced my interest in the field of international education. It certainly explains my love for the history of New York City. Reflecting upon Poppa’s writing brings me to my own story:  how I fell in love with the field of international education and then left it, somewhat suddenly, to explore a career in the “corporate world.”  And then how I came back.

I always found tales of the “other” fascinating.  When I was approximately 8 years old, we had a guest speaker come to my classroom to show us African art.  I remember my jaw dropping as I viewed these cool statues and the incredible dyed materials.  Where was this place Africa and how could I get there? I was hooked, somehow, even at that young age.  I began to explore and question the world around me. What was the origin of certain words that I learned in Spanish class? I read a book about the Peace Corps when I was approximately 13 years old.  How could I go abroad?  And then in high school, I wondered how a Rotary Club student from Brazil could live with my family for an entire year and not miss home enough to return?

I eventually graduated with a Master’s degree from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont and set firmly on my career path.  My first position was as the Assistant Director of New York University’s Office for International Students and Scholars. I eventually left that position to become Director of Study Abroad at Marymount College. And then something strange happened. I opened the paper one day and saw an ad for a company that handled International Assignment Services. They were looking for people who had lived abroad and had experience with other cultures.  So on a whim, I submitted a resume and within a couple of weeks I was being offered a position as an Account Executive in the world’s largest international relocation firm.

After much consideration, I gave my notice and took this new opportunity.  My career path suddenly took a major turn; I was no longer an International Educator, I was “working for the man.”  My Fortune 500 clients drove my calendar, my time was no longer my own.  I was on planes with little notice preparing reports on costs and relocation needs of assignees and repats. I was in Cairo one day presenting to the global Human Resource team for the 3rd largest cement company in the world, then dashing home to meet with local companies who were moving tri-regionally and looking for best practice consulting.  It was exciting, financially rewarding, satisfying and certainly a lot of fun to work with people from so many different walks of life.

But I left.

Why, you may ask?  The short answer is 9/11/2001.

While at home on a tri-regional conference call that fateful morning, I flipped on my television while waiting for all the team members in Singapore to arrive on the call and suddenly a reporter declared that a plane had hit the World Trade Center (Twin Towers).  I immediately knew this was not an accident. I’ve flown in and out of New York City airports my entire life and you don’t just accidentally hit the towers.  You could see them far below you on the right side of the plane on a certain arrival pattern into LaGuardia, but you don’t come anywhere near them.  While discussing this with my colleagues on the phone, I witnessed the live feed of the second plane hitting the towers. I hung up the phone in utter disbelief as I had to call my sister, who worked in Manhattan and also to check in on my brother in law who was a UPS driver. His territory was the Trade Center.

To make a long and horribly difficult story short, thankfully, my family was “fine”. Or perhaps I should say as fine as any New Yorker could be after living through that day and the months of smoke, the stench of death in the air, the horror of knowing that everyone we encountered in our daily lives knew someone who died in the attacks.  It was a time I will never forget and it bled into my glamorous new career like an ulcer that wouldn’t be ignored.

Within days of 9/11, I learned that one of my colleagues from Afghanistan had trash thrown at her while walking down the street in a city in Connecticut.  People yelled “go home” to her, although she is a US citizen, highly educated and fluent in 6 languages.  They saw her darker skin and spewed words of hate and ignorance. I found her at the office, gave her a heartful hug and promised her that we would change this ignorance. I wasn’t quite sure how, but I had to try.

I went to our Human Resource office and asked if I could have their permission to talk with local schools about bringing our incredibly diverse and multilingual staff into their classrooms.  I explained that hate is a learned behavior and that if we could catch the local children early, we could perhaps prevent them from repeating the ignorance that some of their parents were spouting in the community. HR was extremely supportive of the idea. They let me craft some language for a brochure and asked me what we should call this pilot program.  My response was swift – I named it the Global Education Initiative (GEI).  We asked department directors to share this program with the teams on the floor, and within days we had a list of volunteers that represented more than 20 countries. I found myself presenting the idea to the local School Board as well as teams on the floor. The day the war broke out in Iraq,  my Colombian American colleague and I were in a classroom with 50 schoolchildren under the age of 7 who were singing “Its a Small World After All” to a group of schoolchildren in Cairo, Egypt.

I knew I could not stay in my glamorous job any longer;  it was time to return to my first love, International Education. It is where I knew that I could make the most impact.

That was nearly 8 years ago and many things have happened.  The US is still in Iraq.  The GEI program won the State of Connecticut “Gold Award” , the highest honor, for innovation in business.  I started Melibee Global Educational Consulting, took some time off in between to teach ESL in my community, started blogging and work full time in the field that I adore.  And while I don’t jet set weekly and there is no more flying business class, I do know that I’m part of a unique group that puts beliefs before money, social change before social status, and typically chooses international visitors before visiting family!

And you know what, I am so thankful that I returned to this field. No paycheck could replace the gifts that I receive every day in my work and the stories that I get to share with my friends and family. One day, I hope to be writing my story of “these days” in more detail as my Poppa did. And as he taught me, I wouldn’t change a thing about the journey.