During this semester, we have two exams. One of them is the group exam, which I personally looked the least forward to. I find it a bit hard to write one paper together with four other brains with different ideas. However, we were told to write down a list of preferred topicsa and then we were divided into groups according to the chosen topic.
The group I ended up in got the topic NGO’s, which is very broad. After some discussions, we finally ended up with a critical case study of the Hoi An based NGO ‘Action for the city’. One of their projects include organic farming. Therefore, we decided to question the sustainability of organic farming. We wanted to get a better understanding of what the NGO do to improve quality of life by using organic systems. As well as what possibilities and limitations they face by doing it. The group paper had to include data received from fieldwork, which was different from what I did in India. We did qualitative interviews and used secondary literature to answer our research question.
I think it has been a great experience to do fieldwork, and use the data in a paper. Since we examined the NGO organic farms, we got to spend some sunny days out in the field surrounded by working farmers, which was great! The NGO works with different projects to get greater awareness around organic farming and products. We got in contact with a collaborating kindergarten. It was lovely to see the ‘green’ atmosphere in the kindergartens area and the children looked so happy.
All groups handed in their paper in time, but I wish we had more time. Mostly because it takes time to collect valid data and I guess I would have been more proud of our result if I knew that we had been working for a longer period time and collected enough data. However, two weeks of writing does not make you that tired of the selected topic. Also, it makes us work intensively, which suits me better.
After handing in the paper all of us gathered to celebrate! We were all quite tired but at least we could say that we were DONE! Now, we can relax in one day before our individual exam starts. Such a long break 😉 Luckily, we have three weeks to write it and I’m planning to travel for a week before I even start thinking about it.
