Lingxin is a student from Singapore, she joined NCEJ training program as part of the collaboration NCEJ provides to education institutions in Jordan.
NCEJ
Below is here experience as she lived it:
My name is Lingxin from Singapore’s Yale-NUS College and I did my study abroad program in Jordan with the Middlebury School of Jordan. As part of community engagement, I was privileged to volunteer at the National Centre for Environmental Justice for my semester.
While I had an interest in environmental issues in general, my experience at NCEJ exposed me to concepts in environmental justice and the challenges in environmental litigation under the existing legal framework in Jordan, where the definition of environmental harm is not yet well established either as a legal concept or in public awareness.
It also encouraged me to think beyond environmental action within large states and consider the role of civil society in promoting activism in smaller countries such as Jordan and my country Singapore. The team at NCEJ does capacity building work for legal professionals and actively reaches out to the general public, and through my experience, I engaged in various types of projects based on my interest, which include translating articles and presentations from Arabic to English, crafting a questionnaire to gauge public awareness, and attending a capacity-building conference involving judges and lawyers.
As part of cultural exchange, my experience at NCEJ also allowed me to experience workplace relationships and dynamics, as I shared meals and casual conversations with the team at NCEJ. The team and I spoke and collaborated in Arabic only due to the language pledge of my program, so my ability to communicate complex ideas was definitely limited. However, the team at NCEJ was always helpful and immensely patient with me through the process, teaching me phrases like “خميس و ونيس” (or the Arabic equivalent of “TGIF” as we ended a long work week, and breaking down complex concepts like environmental crime for me into simple language (and even some charades) so I can understand them. (Shout out to Mahmoud!)
During discussions, the team was always very collaborative and welcoming of new perspectives that students brought to their work. As such, I found it easy to contribute to NCEJ’s work even as a student volunteer. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with NCEJ and consider it an invaluable opportunity for me to practice my Arabic and to learn about how NGOs work in Jordan, especially in environmental issues.
NCEJ
