Last week I was on a whirlwind trip to Costa Rica. I’ve been sending volunteers to Costa Rica for years to work with ASVO- a local charity that supports conservation activities throughout the country. The program always made sense to me. Volunteers work…

I had an interesting talk with another entrepreneur this weekend. It centred around integrity in the work our organizations do. He said that sometimes you need to adapt your product to what the client wants. But what if in doing this I need to…

We just posted some great photos of CASA Capilano University students Tess and Jess’s time in Ibanda, Uganda. Tess and Jess were the first of the CASA team to visit Ibanda. Their goal this summer was to get to know the community…

Last week, I watched as my downtown got taken over by a rioters. I was glued to my tv watching quite helplessly the events of the evening unfold less than a 15 minute drive from the residential area I live in. Where both my…

I have spent the last 3 days in Ibanda, which is a town and the surrounding district in western Uganda. The people are Ankole (banyankole) which is a different culture than the people that live in Kampala or the Masaka region where I have visited previously.

I confess I have 2 Mortenson books at home- passed on to me by my mother that I have not read (well, I think I read two chapters). But she tells me that the books are very popular with teachers…

I attended a screening of “What are we doing here?” yesterday at the Liu Institute, UBC. Four young family members travel overland from Cairo to Cape Town to look at whether aid has had any positive effect in Africa. My biggest question was whether I would want to use this film when working…

As an educator, I am often too quick to focus on the virtues of education. And forget that it has also been used for millennia to mould the minds of youth- for good and…

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In case you haven’t noticed it is indeed that time of year again. It is time to make that list and check it twice. You know as much as I do that the list you make is mostly what you need to buy. But it is kind of fun too. It is an excuse to…