As soon as he set foot on the Carleton campus, Neal Zuberi Attard knew where he wanted to go to university, but his academic path didn’t become clear until a trip to Kenya this past spring.
In May, Attard spent three weeks in a rural area six hours of bumpy driving west of Nairobi, where the Canadian social enterprise Me to We and its charity partner Free the Children support a hospital, schools, clean water infrastructure and other projects.
The volunteer experience — which was part of a $10,000 year-long RBC Students Leading Change Scholarship — convinced Attard to broaden his studies.
When he begins his third year at Carleton in September, his original plan to major in Political Science will morph into a double Psychology and Human Rights major, with minors in Entrepreneurship and Political Science.
“I think that it’s a must in the world we live in,” Attard says about the value of having an overseas experience as an undergraduate student, an idea that is key to the university’s Strategic Integrated Plan, which holds that the education of global citizens requires exposure to international and global experiences and perspectives.
“Everything is so connected,” he continues. “Learning about global connections in the classroom is important, but when you go to another country and see what’s happening, you don’t get that in the lecture hall.”
In Kenya with a group of 28 Canadian students, Attard pitched in with a shovel and pickax to help build a secondary school dormitory, visited some water projects, helped repair some mud huts — and spent a couple nights sleeping in a mud hut.
“Me to We did a great job helping us understanding what people experience there on a daily basis,” he says.
Attard also talked to students at a school built by Me to We, and to locals about the businesses they have started, including artisans, farmers and members of a women’s dairy co-op. Through these conversations, he saw the transformational power of education, which can help address concerns ranging from illness prevention and food security.
Back home in Canada, Attard is concentrating on his own start-up company, Grandgrants, which helps new Canadians get scholarships, and on his studies at Carleton.
He’s drawn to Psychology because he wants to better understand how to motivate people, and to Human Rights because he wants to help. But he’s still interested in Political Science, especially after volunteering in the Ottawa office of Member of Parliament Eva Nassif.
The opportunity to participate in federal politics — to understand how government works and how policy is developed — was one of the appeals of moving from his home in Greater Toronto Area to the capital.
But really, it was a road trip with friends, visiting university campuses throughout Ontario and Quebec, that sealed the deal.
“I stepped out of the car at Carleton and knew I would come to school here,” says Attard. “It was a gut feeling, and it was the right call.”
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Thursday, June 30, 2016 in Miscellaneous
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