Independent Studies | University of Waterloo

September 2011 Update from Erin:

"I've been working with Canada World Youth for the past couple years - when I finished IS in 2009 I got accepted to law school at McGill but I just couldn't see myself racking up $30,000 in student loans! Law school scholarships are not the greatest...

So I'm applying to go back next year...hopefully they will accept me again and if so I will likely go. But I'm also going to look into some master's programs so we will see what happens. Either way I'm planning to be back in school in Sept 2012, or perhaps January 2013 if I end up doing a master's instead of law (that would be ideal because I could do another contract with Canada World Youth).

"With work, I've been supervising development projects involving Canadian partnerships with local organizations and local youth. Last year I worked in eastern Quebec and Mali (fun but tough living condiitons!) and then this year I got a great contract with BC - South Africa! Since July we've been in the South African phase - living in a black township outside of Cape Town called Khayelitsha. On Sept 30 we return to BC for 3 months of the Canadian phase. Can't complain about South Africa - it is definitely an eye-opener, mind-blowing country as well as having everything a tourist could ever want! "

Erin Moores is a passionate human rights activist, traveler, wilderness lover, foodie, and writer who completed her BIS in 2009. She is currently studying law at McGill University and will specialize in civil and human rights.

Before joining IS, Erin spent three years volunteering in Canada and abroad and working as an outdoor education instructor in British Columbia and Ontario. She stubbornly put off going to school, not wanting a program that would force her into a mould.

The BIS program allowed her to continue to marry her academic interests with her passion for hitting the road: her studies took her from the humble town of Waterloo to the Quebec, where she studied French and fine foods intensively in Chicoutimi and Quebec City, and to Benin, West Africa, where she completed a volunteer internship and a creative non-fiction project on voodoo, before landing her back full circle in her hometown of Ottawa. She maintained a continued focus on education in her independent coursework, examining both radical and alternative education systems as well as public education and teacher training in Canada.

Erin’s thesis combined her interests in democratic citizenship theory with her concerns about education. She examined how citizenship education is represented in the Ontario high school curriculum as well as how it approaches multiculturalism and anti-racism. Erin continues to be committed to finding ways to educate children and youth to be active, concerned, and aware citizens.

Read Erin's thesis, Citizenship for a Modern Democracy: Youth Perspectives on the Canadian Multicultural Reality.

A blog describing her experiences overseas in the winter 09 term can be found at www.travelblogger.net/members/mooresie/

Erin's regular blog is http://vagaregirl.wordpress.com/

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Erin Kristina Moores This page was last reviewed on November 9, 2011