Brief report-week 1

As learning partner

It has been 7 days, the first week, the one half of this international leadership for change program, and an overwhelming number of important, yet interesting events, ideas and experiences were passed and shared to me and the group. Judging by what I have experienced, and what the other group are saying-there is just too much development happening to and around them to put into words. It has only been a week, and we are overflowing with ideas. However, there are these two most dominant parts that I will discuss, “American lack of public engagement VS South African lack of classroom engagement”, and “the advancement of disability assistance”
Americans usually avoid potentially controversial topics, such as politics, religion, or opinions about certain social issues. The above is totally for South Africa, we tend to engage more, we tend to sink into issues and concepts, which is advantageous to our society- it is through engaging, that problems are solved, problems are discovered, and improvements are bound. In the United States, this engagement is normally done more in classrooms than outside the classroom, it is not frequent in many public conversations, even amongst friends, engagement over these topics is less than frequent. It is apparent that classrooms provide a better platform for people to express themselves much more freely than usual. This “classroom-engagement”, is very seldom in the South African classroom environment, it is something that we desperately need, and I will be making sure I raise that to management so that something can be done about it.
In the USA, public facilities accommodate or cater for disabled people more, they have stepped-up facilitated assistance for differently able people in many public areas, schools, stores, hospitals, buses, etc. There are for instance, near most doors in buildings, automatic-door-openers that do exactly that, automatically pop the huge, entrance doors open to make life easier for them. Further, aboard much of the public transportation (Buses, taxis, etc), if not all, there are machinery specially designed to help people using wheelchairs, top effortless board and dismount the vehicle in context. In South Africa we do cater for the needs of those who are differently able, but due to being exposed to the far reaches the US government is going for its citizens, it, makes one wonder, “Is this the best our government can do?”.