Blog 2/3 : Building bridges through ENGAGE

Hello

In this blog post, I want to talk about how the ENGAGE project has developed since my first blog post when much of our work at that time focused on understanding the purpose of the project and exploring how ENGAGE could build stronger connection between different stakeholders. Now, me and my teammate are going through interviews of different stakeholders to understand the view they have towards such project.

The most important part of this stage has been preparing for interviews of the primary stakeholders. My teammate and I have been working on pilot questions that can help us understand different perspectives of the stakeholders connected to ENGAGE. However, working on creating these questionaries for the interview and sitting with interviewees has made me realize that asking questions is not as simple as it first seems. A good question should not push people toward a specific answer. Rather it should create a safe space for honest reflection for both participants.

For me, one reflection I have had during this stage is that different stakeholders of the same category may see the same problem in different ways. As for now, I am taking the interviews of the students who are one of the primary stakeholders and I can see students from different region think about access to opportunities, confidence, and future employment differently. Thus, understanding these different perspectives is important before suggesting any possible suggestion for the ENGAGE project to hold on to. Because when I am thinking critically regarding the responses from the students from different regions, a lot of their responses seems similar in a lot of cases even though their perspective might differ in the broader scale.

This realization has been one of the most valuable learning points for me in this field study course. Because of this, I have beginning to understand how to create a connection between different stakeholders that matches the expectations, mitigate the communication gaps and establish the practical conditions that affect whether collaboration of such scale can be meaningful for both parties.

At this stage, the ENGAGE project feels going towards the right way than it did at the beginning. The direction we want to steer this project is becoming clearer, and the interview process will hopefully help us identify the possible patterns, needs, and areas for development based on the responses from the stakeholders. I am looking forward to finding out if the students and other stakeholders share similar views, or there are differences among the perspective of different stakeholders that need to be considered carefully.

In my next blog post, I am looking forward to reflect more on what we have learned from the interviews and how those insights may shape which direction this ENGAGE project lean towards in the future.