College Experience Leads To International Opportunities

~Jasmine Osiowy has a lot of great memories of her experience as a College of the Rockies University Studies student. "The atmosphere was very friendly and personable, and there were many opportunities to get involved with different things," she said. ~

One of those "different things" took her halfway around the globe.

Jasmine's love of travelling, and her background in video and photography, led to a COTR internship opportunity in which she spent six weeks in 2007 documenting aspects of the college's involvement in Kenya. "While I was there I shot footage of people, places, and organizations, and when I came home I put together four short videos," she said.

The videos can be found at COTR's YouTube site www.youtube.com/cotr1. They include a video featuring Nyeri, the town that the interns were based in; another on Kimathi Institute, the university-college COTR is partnered with; the third on KENWA, a local AIDS organization; and the fourth video on KEEF, a local entrepreneurship foundation.

Although she was equally excited and terrified about going to Kenya, immediately after arriving Jasmine realized that it was going to be an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "My time in Kenya was absolutely amazing. It was unlike anywhere I've ever been before and the people were some of the happiest and friendliest I've ever met," she recalled. Her Kenyan experience has shaped the way Jasmine now sees the world and her place in it, and she expects to do more work in the international arena in the future.

For now, though, Jasmine is staying a little closer to home while she works towards the completion of her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Victoria. She believes that attending the college was one of the best things to have done out of high school, and feels that her education experience at the college was probably better than had she gone straight to university.

"I think doing the first couple of years at a college is a good way to do it, not only because it is less expensive, but also because the quality of education is excellent," Jasmine said. She explains, "It really makes a huge difference to have one-on-one help available and available often; it's something that I really miss and appreciate now that I'm at a larger institution."

For more information on COTR's international opportunities visit www.cotr.bc.ca/interDev/

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