Throughout my life I have worked multiple times with communities who needed help, on every one of these occasions I felt like I was making an impact on them, however very few times I actually stopped and looked back to think more deeply about it. Was the impact requested or the communities’ top priority? Was it sustainable long-term? Was I doing this as a part of personal tourism? This training period has given insight into the importance of these questions and despite I can not properly answer all of them regarding my past experiences (as I am too far removed from the person I was at the time and/or don’t have the relevant information anymore) I know that, moving forward, they will maintain a central role in my understanding when working within or for a community.

The first training day opened with a familiar concept that is always useful to revisit: values. At the beginning of the session we took a moment to reflect how much we and our values changed since last summer. It is surprisingly difficult to step into the shoes of your past self, however the exercise proved its worth as this reflection led to a greater understanding about my personal growth through the research and highlighted the importance of what was to come (LiA). Then we moved into coming to terms with the Laidlaw values. We might not consider them crucial to our personal life, but under the scope of ethical research, ethical volunteering and open-mindedness their worth is undeniable and we worked towards finding ways to adapt them into our own actions. Through roleplay and the simulation of real life scenarios I could see how relevant this mindset is when aiming to engage in ethical volunteering, where high-pressure situations can challenge the values we stand for and might affect the very community we sought to help. Finally, the time given to work on our LiAs admin, risk assessment or any other logistics, allowed me to put into practice what was mere theory before, resulting in enhanced understanding of the knowledge acquired.

The second day had more specific sessions. We started the day with “Volunteering vs Voluntourism”, where we not only learned the difference between the two, but we understood them as part of a continuum, discovering how good intent is not enough, a proper and transparent execution is needed if a positive, long-term impact is pursued. Personally, it was shocking to discover just how deep some malicious structures go, and even good-intended organisations can fall very easily in malicious practices that reproduce damaging stereotypes and endanger the very people they should be helping. The statistics and studies presented were truly eye-opening and highlighted the importance to be constantly conscious of your surroundings and ensure day-to-day that your work is following ethical principles, and not just assume it does. In “Communicating Resilience to Hazards” we explored the different strategies to ensure communication regarding hazards is properly relayed to people from non-academic backgrounds, be it children or adults. The moment of the session I value the most is when we had to justify our selection of professionals for an advisory team against a specific hazard. Despite the fact it is very unlikely we face such an extreme situation in our LiA, the base of it is quite valuable: we should surround ourselves with people who are better than us in certain areas in order to properly tackle an issue that exceeds our expertise. These areas should not be limited to academia, as the exercise showed, having people with strong connections within a community is as crucial as having a technical expert on the topic, because at the end of the day, the work will be done with the community and for the community.

Overall, the two-day training period provided valuable teachings and academic insights that could be easily transferable for my LiA. Furthermore, the practical approach that was taken through the roleplays allowed me to deepen my understanding and highlighted the importance of applying the theory. As I said before, I am sure that moving forward what I learned in these two days will play a central role in my interactions with my surroundings when working within or for a community, especially in my upcoming LiA.