Recent PLC Grad Experiences Poverty In Africa & Asks ‘Why?’

September 6, 2011

By Chelsea Komlo
Class of 2007

After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder in May 2011, I left for Africa with Dr. Jamie Van Leeuwen and the Global Livingston Institute. With this group, we traveled for two weeks throughout Uganda and Rwanda, followed by living for one month at Come Let’s Dance, an N.G.O based in Kampala, Uganda. The purpose of this trip was to discover and witness current issues of poverty and development in East Africa. Amongst other experiences, we visited an Internally-Displaced Person’s Camp, a Child Soldier Rehabilitation Center, several medical centers and orphanages, and collected research from a slum in Kampala.

Traveling with the Global Livingston Institute proved valuable for numerous reasons. First, we we were exposed to more than poverty and desolation in Uganda. We visited many touristic attractions during our travels, which further exposed the growth potential held by many East African countries. Second, we quickly realized there are no “easy answers” to many of the issues we witnessed. As a group, we debated exhaustively about issues such as poverty alleviation and government corruption. Perhaps most valuable of all, we learned how to visit countries such as Uganda while remaining uninvolved. The Global Livingston Institute emphasizes deeply understanding a situation before “jumping in” to help, a lesson I found to be deeply valuable. Although I hope to return to Africa in the future to aid development initiatives, I am first building my expertise in research and policy consulting.