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Chris Westcott ’03 is managing director of San Francisco\u2013based ENGAGE, a grassroots nonprofit that\u2019s like an alumni office for study-abroad returnees.<\/p><\/div>\n
Like thousands of returned students before him and since, Westcott gained confidence, self-knowledge, and practical skills while studying abroad. And like many others, he returned home a changed person, feeling out of step with family, friends, and College. Initially, \u201cit was hard to connect my experiences back to Bates,\u201d he says. Then Westcott discovered ENGAGE, founded a year prior by U.S. college students who\u2019d also studied in Thailand.<\/p>\n
ENGAGE achieved nonprofit status in 2003 and now has 400 members nationwide. While its $50,000 budget would barely send a kid to Bates for a year, and while its director works a second job at the sustainably focused Samovar Tea Lounge in the evening, in terms of tapping into the energy around study-abroad experiences, ENGAGE \u201cis unique,\u201d says Steve Sawyer, associate dean of students at Bates and director of the off-campus study program. \u201cWe know study abroad has a great influence on students. Chris is taking that experience to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n
During last February\u2019s speakers tour from San Francisco to Maine, Man Samsee and 39-year-old Samrat Thong-iam spoke to fair-trade groups and visited several colleges. At each stop, student members of ENGAGE handled everything from accommodations to publicity. \u201cWe do the macro organization,\u201d Westcott says, \u201cbut the energy of our members makes it happen at the micro level.\u201d Indeed, spending time mostly with college-age activists gave the two farmers lasting impressions of American youth: \u201cThey don\u2019t watch TV and they are vegetarians,\u201d laughed Kyra Busch, who traveled with Thong-iam and Samsee as translator.<\/p>\n
Mallika Raghavan \u201908 of Chappaqua, N.Y., and Bowdoin junior Bennett Haynes coordinated the farmers\u2019 travels in Maine. For Raghavan, who studied in Thailand in fall 2006, ENGAGE \u201cmeans that my study-abroad experience never has to end. The transition back to Bates was difficult, but what helped was identifying with a passionate group of people who were concerned with the same issues I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
But more than just a support group, ENGAGE also addresses the perceived lack of equality in relationships between farmers like Samsee and Thong-iam and the advantaged students who breeze in and out of their villages each year. Westcott confronted that issue while studying the role of local communities in managing South Africa\u2019s national parks. \u201cSomeone said to me, \u2018You get to use this research. You get to write a thesis. What do we gain?\u2019\u201d Westcott recalls. \u201cI really struggled to answer that question.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy, really,\u201d he continues. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a student, you get to sit in the study-abroad office, look at a world map, and choose from all these amazing programs. That\u2019s privilege, and we\u2019re trying to change that imbalance by building longer-term relationships with communities, in order to give something back.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduation in 2003 as a summa cum laude<\/em>, Phi Beta Kappa environmental studies major, Westcott traveled back to Thailand with ENGAGE. There, he met and lived with Samrat Thong-iam, helping his co-op successfully establish a fair-trade market in the U.S. (also helping on this initiative have been Batesies Kaia Peterson \u201901, Alexis Curry \u201903, Meredith Maller \u201905, and Gene Stewart \u201906).<\/p>\n\u201cI remember telling Samrat we would help him sell his rice in the U.S., and maybe we\u2019d bring farmers to the U.S. for a tour,\u201d recalls Westcott. \u201cHe was, like, \u2018Sure, whatever. We hear people talk like this all the time.\u2019 We both had a laugh about that conversation when I picked them up at the airport this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
As leaders of fair-trade rice cooperatives in their respective villages, Thong-iam and Samsee, whose rice is sold in Europe, have met many American students, most of whom, like the Batesies, have been part of a program in northeastern Cambodia run by the Council on International Educational Exchange. When American students first visited years ago, Thong-iam says he was skeptical of their sincerity. Why were they interested? What were they were seeking? Now, he says, \u201cwe know they have a real interest in our work in organic agriculture. We have formed real relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
The path from doubt to trust, he says, is like \u201cseeing the flip side of a hand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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