The importance of gaining international experience

Text on screen: [Queen Elizabeth Scholars logo]

Text on screen: [The importance of international experience]

Jazmin Alfaro, University of Winnipeg:

Through this work in Manitoba, I met a contact who was very interested in taking this work to his homeland in the territory, in Kalinago Territory, and the QES scholarship facilitated that perfectly. So again, all about community development and building relationships and long-term partnerships.

Ahmad Firas Khalid, McMaster University:

There’s more so now of a push for people, for students at all scholarly levels to engage with communities abroad. There’s lessons to be learned bilaterally from different countries that we can bring home, and things that we can share from our own experiences. Canada has a lot to offer across the board, whether it is our decision as a country and as a nation to really build an inclusive society. And over time we’ve developed certain skill set as Canadians that it’s phenomenal to share around the world. And I’ve been privileged for the past year as a Queen Elizabeth Scholar to travel the world and share the knowledge that I generated from my internship with Doctors Without Borders with major stakeholders that are interested to hear what does Canada have to offer.

Kevin Capuno, University of Calgary:

In an interdisciplinary program like urban studies or development studies, a lot of what we learn in class is based on theory, and it doesn’t really make sense unless you have that international experience when you’re in the field and you could sort of apply what you learn in the classroom to practicality.

Zeeyaan Somani, University of Calgary:

There’s nurses around the world. We actually have over 13 million nurses working as front-line health care workers. So to understand the experience of nurses in another part of the world and to see how my profession is practiced elsewhere was really interesting to me personally.

Cedric Mayer, Laurentian University:

As a geologist, a lot of geologists actually travel throughout the world for their jobs. And to get international experience for geology is essential because that’s what a lot of mining companies are looking for, to see if students actually went overseas to do work or have international experience.

Matt Jalink, Dalhousie University:

I think people should experience more cultures and more procedures and methods to do things. It’ll help expand their own ways of thinking about things and their own critical knowledge and capacity.

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