Writing: short stories, copy writing, editing, research on all topics and evaluations, government issues, political reviews and spiritual topics.
Hobbies for Barbara are the following: reading, writing, cooking, board games, movies that are historical and investigative, political activities, gardening, spirituality, swimming, and walking in natural surroundings.
Career interests and focus: Research, evaluation, assessments, human displacement and development into societies.
Types of books read are: Detective stories,
biographies, historical novels, spirituality and self-help books also news magazines.
Characteristics that are of interest include the love of travel and meeting new people, making the world a better place in whatever way possible, being very socialble and endeavoring to be a great hostess at all times.
This qualification was done on a part-time basis. The reason being, as a mother of four children between the ages of 14 - 5 years old when this course started, going to school full time was not possible.
This four year degree was attained in 3 years because of credits given for my previous experience and qualifications as a Social Service Worker (SSW). This is a 2 year Diploma, also listed in my profile.
This qualification was inspired when doing Social Work, after encountering refugees entering the society with numerous mental health and displacement problems. Most of these were due to sudden flight from conflict zones around the world, extreme persecution because of religion, race or sexual orientation, in addition to natural disasters, as in earthquakes or famine.
In order to qualify for this 2-1/2 year degree, research took place with the United Nations in East African countries of Rwanda, Uganda Tanzania and Kenya to fully understand reasons why people fled across borders leaving everything behind. This was an outstanding experience, giving insight into the "push and pull" of forced migration issues.
The focus of this 2-1;2 year degree was: Resettlement of Refugees and Displaced People Internationally.
Areas of study included:
-Research done in the Great Lakes Region of Africa in Post Conflict Reconciliation of Refugees and Displaced Populations: UN, Nairobi, Kenya
- A Certificate in Forced Migration - Oxford University, UK
- A Graduate Diploma in Immigration Studies- York University
Working as a consultant involved government and their agencies to a great extent. This work was highly paid, for the most part they were evaluation projects to assess how efficiently government dollars were being spent in each evaluation project.
Health and wellness were an integral part of work done as a Consultant. Mental health is particularly important to maintain physical well being, as all factors to attain and maintain good health for people with various diseases were taken into consideration. Essential in maintaining overall good wellness are: safe housing, medical care, education, safety, employment, acceptance into society and respect for oneself and others.
Before working as a consultant, non-profits were the areas in which employment took place for myself as a Social Worker and Supportive Housing Coordinator. This experience covers a period of 20 years, as a result my knowledge base is extensive, and writing grant proposals, papers of various types dealing with non-profit policies and services took place regularly in this period.
Research in the work presented covers the inadequacies within the Canadian Government's Justice System with regard violence in the home. These facts were presented in a report on the subject.
Women, their history and lives have been important in work done over the years by myself. As such, several papers and research projects have taken place on various phases of women's lives, their health, living conditions and challenges. Ways to improve the situation of women who are uneducated, those with health issues, or living in poverty. In keeping with assessments and findings that were methodically done women and children have been the topic of many written documents.
Spirituality has become a favourite topic in the past five years on which to write. While still on the learning curve in this area, opportunities to improve and expand are of great interest in improving a writing career.
Having been a trainer, part-time college lecturer and workshop moderator, all aspects of education are natural subjects to write about.
Areas of expertise cover curriculum writing in Social Science and Lifeskills topics, establishing rules and regulations for student bodies and preparing lesson plans.
Travel is a favourite hobby, as a result assignments in learning about new places and writing about them are of interest. This area has developed with free lancing as a writer.
Writing in this subject has been in the role of advocate for green healthy living, particularly for the people who work on farms to produce items that are sold in stores. The advocacy is for wage increases and living conditions for workers in the green living industry.
With a research background, this has not been a great challenge for me. Appliances are also in kitchens, around the home and dealing with break downs and fixing these gives an overall understanding of a wide variety of problems that can arise, also how to fix these.
Basically, work done in this area has been research on food offered in various countries around the world. This involves describing local meals, and how well received these dishes were by the visitors to various countries, also levels of nutrition involved.
Writing on electronics has been done quite regularly in my free lance work. This has turned out to be extremely informative and beneficial as a method for learning various modern technologies as this topic, was not of much interest to me in the past.
Having written many grant proposals, with a success rate of about 55%, this area is very familiar in my history and skills.
This area also includes Letters of Intent in order that the organization being represented be selected as a contender for the funds being offered.
Once the grant has been given, then evaluation of the progress and submitting monthly reports can take place if requested by the funder.
A final report at the end of the project is also required, this has been completed by myself after assessing and analyzing the results.