About My Trip

Update, May 2015: I originally traveled to Kolkata as a student, May-July 2014. This year I am returning as the TA!

I've traveled all over the US and have taken day trips to Canada and Mexico, but have never made a transcontinental trip to another country.

Until now!

I'll be traveling to Kolkata (Calcutta) India as part of a social work course in my Masters of Social Work program at U Penn. We leave in mid-May and won't return until July 1st.

 This is the description of the course I'll be taking:  

SWRK 772: Post-colonial Social Work Practice: International Social Welfare in India
In this course, students examine the global welfare system and its engagement with marginalized communities. This six-week course in Kolkata, India, centers around a sex workers’ collaborative in Sonagachi, one of Asia’s largest red light districts. Interviews with the collaborative’s workers and study of their grassroots movement are combined with class discussions and research projects in which students engage with texts on HIV, sex work, feminist postcolonial theory and international social work.

Here is a link to the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, the sex workers' union with which I'll be working and learning from.

Hopefully this trip will be educational and adventurous! I love to take photos, so I plan to take as many as I can in India and post them as long as the internet cooperates. I'll write about my experiences and post some photos of the life I live there!