Why Am I in China?

Originally posted on facebook Wednesday, May 27, 2009 

I am a graduate student at the Clinton School for Public Service in Little Rock, Arkansas. The only program in the country that offers a Masters in public service. www.clintonschool.uasys.edu for more info. 30% of our credits are in the field, so my cohort just completed 2 semester practicum projects that placed us throughout Arkansas to impact communities with particular emphasis in the Arkansas Delta. My practicum was conceptualizing a Delta Visual Arts Center in the northern sector of the delta. Check out the pics from my album labeled as Delta Visual Arts Center.

Our summer project is an International Public Service Project (IPSP) that places students across the world (again, check out the website for specific placements) for 10 weeks. I am in Shanghai, China working with the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, the leading international business association in China from May 24 -Aug 4. My project centers on corporate social responsiblity and the efforts of this chamber to bring coordinated corporate service to the forefront. More specifically, I will work to develop a set of guidelines for corporate service initiatives for members of AMCHAM. In the interim I hope to do some emmerse myself in local culture, visit some cool places, make some new friends, and have a good time. 

I blogged a bit - if you call what I did blogging - during the school year at www.wtoddmoore.blogspot.com( I still have pending posts on that site so apologies to Harvell and the Exit 143 fashion show and Regina who does an excellent job mentoring two young ladies on weekends. I wanted to post them but took somethings for granted - like access and time.) So the plan was to continue blogging on that site. Unfortunately, I ran into the Great Firewall of China and subsequently lack access to some key sites (Actually, I have to be very careful with wording in case I trigger a key word and it all gets booted, which has happened several times already).

Apparently some of the Chinese gods love me because I have ready access to Facebook and Twitter. You can catch some of my earlier 140 character posts on Twitter at @wtm911. I actually like twitter because it makes me be brief and I need all the help I can get on that front! I will try to flesh out those tweets here and connect pictures with words. 

Enjoy! 

Todd