Two students from the Institute are currently undertaking a 6-week Exchange Programme with the University of Applied Forest Sciences (HFR) in Rottenburg, Germany. The Exchange forms part of activities of the ‘‘BWS Plus Collaborative’’ Staff and Student Exchange project, being implemented by the IESS in collaboration with the HFR and funded by the Baden-Württemburg-Stiftung (BWS).

Ms. Priscilla Worwornyo and Mr. Teddy Opare Som Offei are final-year Master’s Students (Environmental Sanitation Studies) at the Institute with research areas in household-level waste segregation and zoned waste collection respectively. The exchange will provide an opportunity for understanding how potentially useful lessons drawn from the experiences of waste segregation and zoned collection in Germany can be applied to improve the waste situations of their respective study sites of Kpone Katamanso and the Ga East Municipal Assemblies.

As students of the Institute for Environment and Sanitation Studies, Priscilla and Teddy aim to become researchers who are knowledgeable in the diverse trends of global environmental and sustainability issues and can propose effective solutions to the challenges. They believe that to achieve the above, one of the most efficient ways is to ‘‘step out of our comfort zone totally open-minded to embrace new cultures, experience unfamiliar situations, and appreciate the different perspectives of how things are done’’.

The students hope to learn a lot through the opportunity by acquiring more practical knowledge on global trends and perspectives on environmental, sanitation, and sustainability conversations which will lead them to make meaningful contributions to the development of the country and the world at large. 

While the pair anticipate different experiences; terrifying, exciting, or a mix of both, they are poised to make these memorable and impactful. They intend to try out new foods, learn some recipes, make new friends, build strong networks and learn some German to enable them, at the least, to make an order at a restaurant or hold a two-minute conversation.

Photo Credit: Nina Schaefer