NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

2011 Fellows

Sexual Health Education in Guatemala: It is time to learn about the condom

by

Alexandra Kamler
Antigua, Guatemala

These past few weeks we have been giving the second part of our two part workshops to the students at INVAL. This workshop builds off of the basic information the students learned in the first workshop about the parts of the bodies, reproductive systems, how they function, and why they’re important. These classes are more engaging for the students because most of the class is demonstrations and activities. We start with an exercise brainstorming about the changes that occur during puberty and then discuss why and how these changes occur. We review menstruation with drawings on the board and then review what tampons and pads are, and how they work. A quick demonstration with a tampon and water from the cap of a water bottle to show how the absorption works always fascinates the students. Using tampons in Guatemala is rather uncommon and none of the students had ever seen exactly how a tampon absorbs liquid. Before I take out the tampon from its wrapper, I hold it up and ask the students to name what I am holding. The most common answer is “condom”. Most of these students do not have ready access to the Internet and are lucky if they have televisions in their homes. For teens in the United States, if they have watched television chances are they have seen a tampon commercial and could most likely recognize one if they saw a teacher holding it up. The inundation of information from the media that happens to children in the United States is not happening here for this particular group of students who make up the lower socio economic class of Antigua. Once we review that no in fact this long plastic tube is a tampon and not a condom, we go on to cover how a woman becomes pregnant, the ways to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. We then pass around birth control pills so the students can recognize what a package would look like if they went to a pharmacy to buy a pack, and discuss how the hormones protect a woman from becoming pregnant.

Our workshops take place in the library. The library is a large room filled with desks and a dry erase board at the front. The books that one would expect to find in a library are locked away behind a door where the students cannot access them. I have never seen a librarian, all the books have dust on them and I am not sure if the students are allowed to check them out. I have never seen a student hold one of the books. The other day one of the students asked me what all of the books were for. On either side of the room, there are two walls of windows. On one side, the windows that open an inch or two look over a grassy area. On the other side of the room, the windows, which begin at about waist height and go upwards towards the ceiling look onto the hallway. Usually by the time Alex, Andrea, and I have covered the different methods of birth control and how they work there are three to four teachers standing, peering into the classroom. The first time this happened I went outside to ask if the teachers would like to come in and sit in on the class to hear what we were discussing. They all replied in a hurried fashion and thanked me but were just as happy watching from the outside.

Every morning, after we discuss the different methods to prevent pregnancy, the hormone and the physical barrier methods, we take out the two plastic penis models I bought in a sex shop in Guatemala City. The store did not have two models of the same color so one is a tissue color and the other is fluorescent, it glows in the dark. While I also find this somewhat amusing, the students act as if one of us has just flashed the class. Andrea was trying to explain what the cultural equivalent of having these two models present in the class, let alone asking the students to use them to put condoms on is. In her explanation she helped me remember that these kids have never had their parents talk to them about sex, about how to care for themselves, let alone the correct steps to put a condom on and how to take it off correctly. Culturally, Andrea said it would be something of similar shock value if I were to go into a public high school in New York and put on a porn video. Granted, what we are doing in INVAL is extremely different and the purpose/benefits of the workshops are profoundly different than just showing porn. However, that is the supposed equivalent shock value for this particular group of students. Now by this time, we have about four or five teachers, usually male, standing outside peering into the classroom. To finish out the second workshop we demonstrate, using the models, how to put on and take off a condom correctly. Then we have each student take a male condom, the model, and a paper towel and show us the correct steps, while telling us what they are doing as they are doing it, to check if the condom is still able to be used, how to take it out of the package without damaging it, how to put it on, and how to take it off of the model correctly.

From conversations with the students, I have learned that very few people want to go to the pharmacy or the clinic to talk to a pharmacist or doctor and see if they have a sexually transmitted infection. Just the other day I went into a pharmacy, as I do every morning, to buy two big boxes of condoms- about 90 condoms total depending on how many classes I am teaching that morning. As I was waiting for the pharmacist to go get the boxes, I saw about three or four pharmacists huddle together behind the racks of medicine and start laughing about the condoms I was about to buy. I am the one teaching the sexual health education class and that even made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Imagine how uncomfortable a kid would feel if they went in and wanted to ask a question about how to use a condom, or what lubricant is. After the pharmacist returned, still with a grin on his face, I asked whether he tells the adolescents who come into the pharmacy how to use a condom correctly or if he passes out a pamphlet to ensure they know how to protect themselves. He told me that if they are coming in to buy a condom then they already know how to use it. I recognize that pharmacists do not do that in the United States either, but I still do not think it would hurt to pass out a pamphlet or train the pharmacists so they can learn how to talk about protecting oneself without laughing. I tried another pharmacy in Antigua and that morning I did not explain that I was teaching sexual health education and that is why I was buying the condoms. Before giving me the boxes, the pharmacist asked me what exactly my job was, implying that I might be working nights on the next corner and that’s why I needed so many condoms. It was comical that he thought a gringa is making so much money as a prostitute she has decided to use 80 condoms per night. The whole interaction was wild.

Here in Antigua, people often do not go to the doctor because it is expensive and so they go to the pharmacist, explain their symptoms and the pharmacist provides the medicine they think the sick person should take to recuperate. In the United States, this is usually the role of the doctor. So, if the pharmacist is what the doctor is in the United States, if adolescents come into a pharmacy the pharmacists should be trained on the issues that may be affecting adolescents and should know how to begin a dialogue so that the adolescent feels a bit more comfortable with their purchase of condoms.
Now, back to the classroom. Each student takes a turn as Alex and I go around ensuring and correcting their mistakes as they open, put on, and take off the condom. The 35 sixteen-year-old boys are waiting, making jokes as most adolescent boys would when you show up with a glow in the dark model penis and tell them to put a condom on it. However, when it is their turn, their hands begin to shake and they have difficulty opening the packet. They begin to sweat and all the other boys are silent until they are able to open the package and take out the condom. After the boy complete ONE of the steps correctly, all the boys applaud, and they quickly conclude that he is a sexual expert and because of all of his experience, he can open the condom. This happens almost every time, with almost every boy. We are thankful for those, although they are few, adolescent boys who are not as aggressive and crass about the activity. Remember that INVAL used to be a boys public school but has since turned into co-ed so in each class there are around 3-7 girls. When we get to the girls, they turn squeamish not wanting to touch the condom. The other day we had three girls who refused to do the activity in front of the boys. While I forget this dynamic when I am at the front of the class, I am quickly reminded as the boys all get very quiet, watching which girl can put the condom on correctly. If she completes all of the steps then she has obviously had a lot of experience, if she cannot then there are jokes. Recognizing that this is not the point of the exercise, we had the three girls stay after class, and forced the boys to step away from the windows so that the girls could do the exercise without feeling that pressure.

Looking about what we are doing here at INVAL, I wonder what the Director thinks of it all. She has never walked into our classroom to see what we are teaching. Sure, she glanced over the first few pages of the outlined curriculum but she does not really know what we are teaching her students. No teacher has ever come in to monitor us or evaluate our workshops. Whenever she asks to speak with me, she calls me from out in the hallway. She has never stepped foot into our classroom, not even before we begin teaching. I began to wonder why. I almost started to feel as though she was not interested. Then I realized that perhaps she recognizes the importance of this workshop, wants to continue being able to give it to her students but politically cannot openly support everything that we are bringing to this workshop, penis models and all. By never stepping foot in the classroom, or sitting in on a workshop she can maintain a supposed ignorance about what is going on. If someone is upset about our workshops and come to her, demanding to know how she could have let something like this happen she can still claim that she was unaware. While it is unfortunate that she cannot fully embrace our classes, I do think that is strategic of her to work with us in this manner. The only thing I foresee being a problem is if I try to make this a sustainable program for other students who have interest in continuing our workshops with future classes. The director will be forced to take on a bit more responsibility in regards to what is being taught. At least it seems she would have to be aware of what we are teaching. And so, until next time, I will be teaching and thinking about ways to keep this program we have started sustainable and under the radar until the Director can fully support what we are teaching.

Un autographe, azafady!: Signing up for development in Madagascar

by

Malaika Neri
OTIV Alaotra Mangoro
Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar

Of course, I was thrilled.
Lôla gave me his number!

We had just finished watching the concert he had performed for over 2000 people, all of them Malagasy, save for the four of us – my three French friends, and I – the sole vazahas in the crowd.

The show was great – Lôla, one of Madagascar’s most popular musical artists, sang his heart out, and besides being a stellar performer, he seemed to put his whole heart into singing songs about taxi brousses (Madagascar’s inter-city bus transport that very thoroughly communicates a sense of what sardines must feel like, as they bounce along bumpy roads in metal canisters), ex-lovers, and joie de vivre.

With the sun setting in a red flame behind the blond hairs of Christophe (an intern an agricultural collaboration project between Agence France de Développement (AFD) and the Malagasy government), Lôla ended his concert, shouting “Veloma, tompoko (Goodbye, everyone)!” into the microphone, before he went offstage. People all around us began ambling towards the exit. Many of the men gave me a red-eyed leer as they sauntered past – a look usually accompanied by “Bonjour vazaha!” when the voyeur is sober.

Hélène, a française working on a collaborative agricultural development project between a French département and the region of Alaotra Mangoro to increase the productivity of milk-producing cows, grabbed my hand, whispering, “Tu penses qu’il va nous donner un autographe?”
But even as she asked, and as we consequently bounded towards the backstage area, where Lôla stood surrounded by a crowd of eager and inebriated Malagasy fans, we knew.

We knew we were assured of an autograph.

We knew that all Hélène had to do was to whip out her digital camera, and Lôla would bypass every other fan to come stand beside two excited foreigners, obliging us with a photograph and a smile.

We knew, because we are vazaha.

Lôla proceeded to ask me if I wanted his number (US tour, anyone?). Sure, yeah, why not!

It can be pretty cool, this vazaha business. I know that I can waltz into the Bank of Africa, and ask to speak with the directeur. Ten minutes later, we’re conversing in his plush office, and he’s saying almost-yes to my request for another meeting.

“I tried to apply for an internship there, but the secretary wouldn’t let me speak to the director,” a Malagasy friend complained to me. Narina is 27, and an Ambatondrazaka native.

“But I had no problem!” I said, eyes widening.

“That’s because you’re vazaha,” she said, matter-of-factly.
And even as I rushed to contradict her, wanting very badly not to let my sometimes burdensome privilege create any sort of rift in our relationship, I knew she was right.

Because even as I’m here to learn about development, to think about working in development, to make friends with other people working in development and ease my way into the ever-growing network of “development professionals,” development is still the domain of the vazaha, at least in Madagascar.

All of the country’s largest companies are owned by vazahas.

Because when the 1970’s socialist government sold of state-owned assets, only les étrangères had enough capital to buy them.

“Mais, Madame,” said Rivo, a gangly, seventeen-year-old standing up behind a rickety desk. I had been teaching his ingilisy class about finance and credit en anglais, and simultaneously promoting OTIV and its savings and loan instruments. “You tell us that ‘capital’ means a very large sum of money…if I take out a loan for capital, how will I ever pay it all back?”

But even as my colleague, Madame Naina, very quickly told Rivo that his borrowing amin’ny l’OTIV would be strictly confined to his capacité à rembourser, I wondered if Rivo would ever have a great deal of capital with which to play.

In America, we have venture capitalism. In Madagascar, they have dreams. And even though OTIV is development project hanging somewhere between the two polarities, it doesn’t seem adequate.

Today, every single development project (as far as I know) in Madagascar is externally-funded. The nickel and cobalt mines in Moromanga constructed with Japanese, Korean, and Canadian dinero. The French stagiaires who have become my friends, all working on their theses about agricultural credit. The Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) who live and work in small towns and villages teaching English and business development and nutrition and contraception, speak fluent gasy, and inform the locals that, no, we don’t have dinosaurs in America. Even CECAM, our microfinance competitor, is a UNDP baby.

“Moi, personellement, I thank you for your initiative,” said Monsieur Jocelyn, chef de l’exploitation at OTIV, to me, his honey-coloured eyes very serious. “Somehow, that initiative is missing at our office.”

Indeed, that initiative seems to be missing in Malagasy development efforts in general.

“You know, the [development] project starts out just fine when the vazahas come and set things up,” recounted the directeur-adjoint of OTIV, as we trundled along the route goudronnée between Toamasina, Madagascar’s premier port, and Moramanga, a transit town south of Ambato. “But then, the vazahas leave, and boof!” he exclaimed, hands flying apart in an explosive gesture, ironic laughter twinkling in his dark eyes.

Human rights are all very well and good. Heck, they’re incredibly exciting. But what if all the vazahas just up and left Mada? Would development continue?

“I fear for them,” Madame Lavine, a French transplant and directrice of the Alliance Française, said to me, shaking her head, looking out her office window at the soft, brown mountains in the distance. “The rest of the world is going to keep developing, and they’re just going to stay the same, and eventually they’ll fall so far behind that they’ll never be able to catch up.”

So then, is development a human right if it seems like only certain humans can make things right?

#1

by

Drew Castañeda
Ballhaus Naunynstrasse
Berlin, Germany

I have been living in Berlin just one day short of six weeks. I am interning at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, an experimental theater company based in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The theater is housed in a former ballroom dating back to the nineteenth century. Since its extensive renovation in 2008 (the official “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue”), Ballhaus Naunynstrasse has established itself as an important center of migrant and ‘postmigrant’ cultural production.

The Ballhaus team has been remarkably eager to incorporate me into their working space and individual projects. I have already had the opportunity to help out in several departments within the theater; I spent my first two weeks in Production Management and have since completed various assignments in the Press and Finance departments. These departments operate under kulturSPRÜNGE e.V., an interdisciplinary network founded in 2003 that aims to support and make visible the artistic and cultural achievements of migrants and ‘postmigrants,’ as well as to foster exchange and dialogue between artists, political activists and academics around the topics of migration and urban culture.

At the moment, I am involved as a director’s assistant with “Pauschalreise: Die 1. Generation” and am set to begin working on a second production, “Perikızı,” next week. Both productions will premiere at the Almancı! Festival, a theater/ performance/ film/ music/ literature festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of the official bilateral agreement on labor recruitment between Turkey and Germany. Written by Hakan Savaş Mican and directed by Lukas Langhoff, “Pauschalreise: Die 1. Generation” will open the festival. It is the last in a trilogy that foregrounds the role of generation vis-à-vis migrancy. We are still in the initial phase of fleshing out the content of the play. In my next post, I will elaborate on the interesting process that the director and his team have opted to collect narratives and ideas for the play, which has yet to be written.

Perikızı is playwright Tunçay Kulaoğlu’s contemporary adaptation of an earlier play written by Turkish German playwright Emine Sevgi Özdamar. It will be directed by Michael Ronen, from Israel. I was originally set to work with this director on a play titled Keloglan in Alemania, which would have also been a contemporary version of an earlier Özdamar play performed alfresco, but for whatever reason, the theater decided to produce Perikızı, indoors. I will begin working with this production next week and will have more to tell about it in my next post.

Crouching capital, hidden credit risk: lending to the poorest in Madagascar

by

Malaika Neri
OTIV Alaotra Mangoro
Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar

”We’re not touching the lowest couche of the population,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes. “We tried, and [the credit risk] just wasn’t worth it.”

There it was: a slap in the face of microfinance.

Madame Eugenie, head of the Crédit avec Education program created by Freedom From Hunger (FFH – an American non-profit) at OTIV, had been explaining OTIV’s manifestation of the savings program designed around solidarity group loans – a lending model popularized by Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank and Nobel Prize fame.

Someone from OTIV heads out to a village and proposes an Association de Crédit (AC) – a borrower’s group that needs no physical collateral to get its feet wet with loans. Instead, they rely on conscience solidaire – every woman in a Groupe de Solidarité (GS) of four to six people promises to insure the others’ loans and timely reimbursements. If one member defaults, everyone loses access to future credit.

When a GS member is unable to adequately reimburse her loans, the rest of the group’s members chip in from a pot of collective tahiry, or savings. And if a GS can’t complete the balance of the repayment, members from other GS – who together form an AC – can chip in, so that OTIV gets back all of its money.

“The way FFH created the program, we’re supposed to target the poorest women of society – les groupes défavorisées,” continued Madame Eugenie. “But it was toujours un échec – always a failure.”

“Les pauvres,” she elaborated, “only think of living day to day. It’s hard enough trying to get them to save their money. Repaying their loans is a whole other story. And many of them are chômeurs – unemployed.”

Instead, OTIV opts for a safer bet: la classe moyen, or middle class Malagasy: women who already have a little money, who are looking “for a bit of déroulement.” Every week, they meet with an animatrice from OTIV, who helps them organize themselves. After the first month of “training,” during which the mpikambana, or members, are sensibilisé to the rules of the AC, the women assess each other’s loan requests, and also begin with the éducation. The animatrice – typically an employee from one of OTIV’s caisses – teaches the women about alimentation, AIDS, breastfeeding, la diarrhée – everything to do with health, and all towards the goal of eradicating chronic malnutrition. After the première cycle, they continue with business development – sharing savoir-faire on growing an entreprise and developing a clientele.

And so far, the program, which began in 2000, has been a hit, with high repayment rates. In 2006, the Malagasy government in Tana sat up and took notice, permitting its expansion throughout the island country where microfinance flexes a bigger muscle than the capital-flush Bank of Africa, and its Malagasy cousin, BNI.

Yet for all its successes (and there are many, because women tend to make for very reliable borrowers), Crédit avec Education is not reaching the poorest of the poor, primarily due to the dearth of a culture of saving.

“Microfinance worked so well in Bangladesh because they already have an ingrained idea of saving money,” exclaimed a Peace Corps volunteer I met during my first week here, referencing the Grameen Bank in Dhaka. “Here, it’s a different story; people simply don’t save.”

“The questions are always about credit,” laughed Madame Naina, who runs most of the marketing efforts at OTIV. “That’s because we’re poor, us malagasy.”

The former head of Madagacar’s sénat explained a different angle.
“All the paysans are screwed,” he said, shaking his head. We were sitting in my host family’s restaurant, under the tube lights that populate every Malagasy establishment and home.

“Thing is, they take out a loan from OTIV. Then they can’t repay it, so they run off to CECAM (another local microfinance, funded by the UNDP) for another loan to repay the one from OTIV. And the cycle continues.”

This might sound familiar. Two years ago, it was all that BBC and CNN were talking about: lots of people with loans (i.e., sub-prime mortgages). Lots of people unable to repay their loans. A slew of defaults. Et voilà: a financial crisis. OTIV is in a similar muck, because the business (even if it’s not-for-profit) of lending to people who aren’t habituated to saving is a tricky one.

How do you teach people to save when they seem to have no desire to do so?
We’ve been trying, petit à petit, to spread the “it’s good to save!” message in schools around town, in French and English and Malagasy and lots of emphatic hand-wagging, and now at the regional foire – a giant amalgam of vendors from all over Alaotra Mangoro – but I keep wondering if the idea is going through, if the message translates class and race, if the listener has stopped focusing on the fact that I’m a vazaha – a stranger in a strange land – and has started listening to how tahiry can be a really good thing.

Of course, there’s value in a project that provides capital to those who stand no chance of gaining access to credit at one of the banks. But if microfinance isn’t helping out the poorest of the world’s poor in a “very poor” country, then what is?

A sweet promise to orphans

by

Yuliya Lynch
Perm, Russia
Perm Regional Assistance Center

See here for photos

My responsibilities in this Center include translation of their webpage and other documents into English and assist in filling out the applications for grants. Also, I participate in round tables, discussions, listen to complaints of citizens, and review the materials of court decisions.

Today, I will write about the topic that shocks even me considering I am Russian and know how the things work here. Not only the government doesn’t provide orphans with housing as it promised, but takes away their children because orphans don’t have a place to live.

In poor conditions orphans lived for 18 years and then the only home they have (an orphanage) the government takes away compensating the orphans with a sweet promise of their own home. The media have been talking about this issue, but no result. Our Center wrote about it and represented orphans in courts. Moreover, the Center helped their clients to win the law suits, but the government simply replayed they do not have money to provide orphans with housing. So sorry. However, the city of Perm just this summer invested millions of dollars in the infrastructure of the city because the mayor wants Perm to be a cultural capital of Russia. There is 2,500 orphans, who need a home.
In my opinion, before the local government decides to turn the city into cultural capitol, they should keep their promises to its citizens. The orphans would appreciate the housing and the company of their children more than a nice looking street.

Today, once again, the couple walked into the doors of our Center. The government promised them an apartment, technically a small room in the apartment, but still a roof over their heads. Well, the time passed, no housing was provided. Once again, the government doesn’t have funds; they cannot fulfill its promise. They went to court and the judge agreed that the government must provide them with a house to live in. In addition, to the housing situation of this couple, they are waiting for their first child. It is a real possibility that the child services will take their child away. So, Perm will be a cultural capital of Russia, where 2,500 orphans live with no roof under their heads and with a fear that the child services may take away their children because they have nowhere to live.

Why does the Russian government create a law and publicly announce the program for the orphans? In my opinion, the administration just wants to show off and to “prove” that Russia is a democratic country that cares about low income class citizens.

Sexual Health Education in Guatemala

by

Alexandra Kamler
Antigua, Guatemala

Last time I wrote, I had just sent the director of INVAL, Magali Rosales Garcia the sexual health curriculum that Alex, Andrea, and I had created for the students. On Monday I sent it, on Tuesday I followed up, and on Wednesday when I had yet to hear anything, we went to INVAL to speak with the director. It seems much easier to just walk in and ask to speak with a director of a high school here than it would be in the United States. Appointments do not seem as necessary and email correspondence has not proven to be the best method of communication. Showing up seems to work best. Magali apologized for not returning our emails; she was swamped with restructuring classes. Four of her teachers were suspended. INVAL is a public school, funded by the government. Classes are separated in two parts, the morning classes, and afternoon classes. Students either attend classes in the morning or afternoon. There are 16 sections of students that attend morning classes. There are between 25 and 50 students in each class. Each day the students attending the morning classes have 8 classes of 35 minutes each. They start their days at 7:30 and end at 12:30. Magali told us that she had 4 teachers suspended; there are 4 class slots where she does not have anything for her students to do. There are not sufficient resources or number of teachers to fill the slots. How perfect we just happened to want to do a project.

After glancing over the curriculum, Magali informed us that none of this information would be new to her students but she didn’t see any reason why we should not do this project. She told us that APROFAM had already visited the students and given them workshops on sexual health and so we should not go into the classroom thinking the students were ignorant about this information or that they were ill informed. Rather, they were already well educated on all of these topics. Magali finished the meeting letting us know that our first class would be the following morning at 7:30 a.m. and we would be teaching students between the ages of 11 and 18. She also mentioned we should be teaching all the students the same information but to make sure it is age appropriate. Sure, not a problem Director.
On Thursday Alex, Andrea, and I arrived at 6:45 a.m. with two huge water jugs full of smoothies, 300 ham and cheese sandwiches, and 15 bags of cookies. That day we taught straight from 7:30 through 12:30 and saw 4 different classes, each for 2 sections of 35 minutes each. Our first class with each section starts slow as we do an activity to get to know each other and then move on to go through the parts and functions of the reproductive systems of males and females. We go over the changes that occur during puberty, giving particular attention to what happens during menstruation, and then we move on to how a woman gets pregnant and an activity that has to do with common myths regarding pregnancy prevention. We have a question box where each student is requested to write something to put in the box. It is anonymous and if we have time, we read through and answer the questions. If our time is up, we write up responses that night and print out sheets for the students to take the next day.

To the director’s surprise, the students are not as well informed as she had once thought. I remember first having sexual health classes in the third grade, then again in the sixth and in my high school, we had a human development class. I am still learning all there is about sexual health so it is understandable that the students do not remember every detail from the 15-minute presentation by APROFAM (Association for the well-being of the family in Guatemala) they had once last year. Some say that a person has to learn something six times before they really grasp onto the information.
The students engage with us and seem extremely open to the information that we are presenting. All the students have a lot of questions, apart from the 13-year-old boys who look more like seven-year-old boys and sit in silence for the first twenty minutes of the class with eyes wide and mouths open as we go over the anatomically correct pictures of the female and male reproductive systems. The students seem to have heard many popular phrases or names of diseases and myths from friends, family, and the media but are not exactly sure what they all mean when asked about them later on. We joke and cover the information, answering questions along the way hoping to clarify the different options students have in regards to protecting themselves if they choose to have sexual relationships. We pass out snacks and ask them to call us by our first names, hoping to make it a more informal and comfortable atmosphere. As the students file out of the door to say goodbye, kissing us on the cheek, one student stays behind and then another. The first asks me what the likelihood is that he has HIV if his mother has something called AIDS. He remembered us talking about the relationship between the two earlier in class and wants to know more. Another girl lags behind and waits for me to finish answering his questions before she asks me how she can give herself an abortion.

And suddenly the class is no longer as light-hearted. It has stopped being a lesson of hypothetical situations and theoretical ways in which to care for yourself. I am teaching sexual health education in a catholic country where abortion is illegal and condoms are not easily accessible, particularly for adolescents who feel ashamed to go in and ask the pharmacist who just so happens to know everyone in their community. These kids attend a school where the teachers are no shows and where I can have them for another 35-minute section if we have more information to cover. No, no math today- more sexual health education, the math teacher is sick. Apparently, the kids that attend this school are lucky to be there and most likely will start working after they graduate. Their families do not have the funds to pay for the 2 years of specialized school that comes after colegio and before the University. Many factors are just collapsing onto each other. It suddenly seems ironic that I am trying to teach these students how to care for themselves in a school that does not have potable water for them to drink. The government also thought that a good budget cut was toilet paper so for the 13 year old girl who just got her period, she better hope that her friends brought packets with them for her to use. When Alex and I walk around the school we see more people working in the office than in the classrooms and I wonder what is going on. INVAL is apparently one of the largest public institutes for kids in Guatemala. Since our teaching started, I have learned that looking at health, as a human right is necessary, particularly in finding ways to have information regarding health accessible to young people. I also think that as important as I believe sexual health to be in promoting and providing information so students can choose the options they feel are best for their own lives, there are many foundational aspects that need to be looked at in regards to health in this high school before we get to condoms and spermicide. For example, there needs to be soap in the bathroom, toilet paper, and drinking water. When I think of NYU these are the very basic items that the school supplies. But on the other hand, these students are lucky in the grander scheme of things. They get to attend school. They are not working in the dump where landslides kill people after heavy rains and vulture’s circles high above. These kids do not have to clothe every part of their body to shield it from the sun; sunglasses to protect their eyes from particles of trash, bandanas over their nose and mouth so they do not breath in the feces wrapped in toilet paper. The kids in INVAL most likely have at least one family member and can afford to not work in the morning. So relatively speaking in relation to the other children their age, who are only an hour bus ride away working in the dump, the students of INVAL are lucky to get anything. However, this is obviously problematic. This is exactly the mentality that permits a government to get away with not paying its teachers, which in turn makes them not want to show up which clearly affects the quality of education that the students receive. I am learning a lot about the students and even more about the interconnectedness of the government, economy, education, and health of the people of Guatemala. I am trying to unpack it all, understand how the different parts function, and depend on one another more clearly. And until the suspended teachers return to teach, Alex, Andrea, and I will be at INVAL learning and answering questions from the ‘anonymous questions box.’.

Land-Grabbing; Problems and Resolutions

by

Mari Haraldsson
Battambang Province, Cambodia
Parliament Member Mu Sochua

On my first day at the office in Phnom Penh one of the staff members came in and asked me to report on a case of land-grabbing that she witnessed on her way to work that morning. At 8 am a woman and her family woke up to over one hundred police officers surrounding her home in Phom Penh Commune Sen Sok District. Suddenly a group of workers broke into her home and started demolishing the house.

There are three families occupying three separate houses situated next to each other. Each of the three houses has now been destroyed—without warning, without legal permission. Spending time here in Cambodia for the past 2 months has made it clear that ‘legal permission’ has little authority—in fact, it is often completely disregarded by the authority figures.
The owner of one of the houses is a vendor, and her husband is a teacher. They have lived in the house since 1992, when they purchased the land. She has been involved with an unfinished court case regarding the property; however, the court ordered protection over her house, ensuring that no one would destroy or take over her home for the time being.

Not only was she given no warning of the eviction, but now her home has collapsed as well. As she answered reporters about her situation, her house was being torn down behind her. She asks the government, “Why didn’t you inform us before destroying our house?”

Five people in the house protested the action and tried to stop it. All of them have now been arrested. This is only one of many cases of illegal forced evictions happening in the area.

My first reaction was to ask: if the court explicitly did not allow for the destruction of these houses, how could this have happened?

That question now seems so naïve.

State violence against women is a continuation of war in time of peace. As Sochua said when we discussed this, “When the court system is colluding with the state to maintain the culture of impunity, the entire system of governance has collapsed. We need to report and tell the truth. Empowerment of victims is to not let the injustice be untold.”

More recently, in Battambang, I was taken to see a public space that has been grabbed by a CPP village chief. Among several rice paddies and farmland there is a small pond from which the farmers pump water. The pond has been set aside as public property—for everyone to use freely. The village chief, however, has decided to build a fence around it to keep farmers from accessing the water. He has been using it for him and his family, and is currently looking for the highest bidder to sell the pond to. Since he is a CPP leader, and thus a part of the majority, the SRP leaders in the district are unable to do anything. His crime is being supported and protected by the other CPP members.

We had a meeting for all the opposition party leaders of the district to try and figure out how to solve this problem. The impoverished farmers are unable to properly tend their crops because of this situation and it is negatively impacting their livelihood in a very tangible, direct way.

After much discussion and visiting the site, the leaders have decided to write up a report to the national leaders with the hope that there will be an appropriate response. CPP members are the majority at the national level too, of course. After all, they are the ruling party.

Hopefully this will be resolved soon. Unfortunately, it is overwhelming how much of this is happening at various degrees of severity all over the country. Again, the violators are the ones who are supposed to, who have even been elected to, protect these people and their basic rights.

On a brighter note, the land-grabbing case I wrote about in my first post has been resolved!!! I spoke with Sochua over dinner a few nights ago and she said that the farmers have not contacted her or reported any issues since we went to the police officer and had that “trial.” The resolutions they came to have actually been enforced so far, which is extremely encouraging.
—
Unfortunately I have fallen ill and must return to the States to see a doctor. I have met with all of the leaders, however, and we have made plans so that I will be able to continue my work while I’m in New York. Thank God for skype and 3G USBs! I will still give leadership trainings with a translator.

There are many stories left to share, so I will be keeping up with this blog. I took a break while I was bedridden with a 104.5 fever, but now I’m feeling well enough to document what has been happening here. I fly home on Wednesday and I will start my medical tests on Thursday. Hopefully they will all go well! I look forward to good health. I will definitely write about the experience of being a privileged foreigner with access to healthcare—it has been a truly mind-boggling experience, one that has been humbling, confusing, and significant for my personal growth.

Take good care,
Mari

Rushing towards the future: redefining development in Madagascar

by

Malaika Neri
Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar
OTIV Alaotra Mangoro

The stars are the most beautiful. Big, gleaming orbs of light that has travelled across the universe shine down, brightening a broad night in a small town amidst rice paddies and fields of green beans.

They are bright, those stars, but I can’t see them in New York City because we’re all plugged in, connected yet disconnected.

My fingers hover over the keyboard, unsure how to describe this experience. Unsure how to explain the amalgamation of frustration and contentment.
Because this is a slow island. Camions (Quebecois for big trucks) rumble slowly over mud roads strewn with pebbles. And everywhere, there is bevuvka, the endless poussière that rises up from the red African soil to coat cars, clothes, trees and nostrils with a layer of brown dust.

People walk slowly, ambling to work at five in the morning, and ambling home as the sun sets around five in the evening, exposing a blood-orange crease in the belly of this big, big sky. At my office, a bastion of bureaucracy in a town full of small and medium enterprises (SMEs – certainly one of my favourite acronyms), everyone sits down to work at seven-thirty or eight a.m., but jumps out of their seats once an hour for a pose.

Often, I’m irritated by the passivity. The total disregard for a need to work hard to gagner l’argent, or make a living. The Malagasy seem to amble through life, not perturbed in the least by a desire to improve their country, or province, or city, or even, fokontany, or neighbourhood.

I came to Madagascar to learn about economic development, to learn how life can be better for the family of eight who live in a wooden shack measuring seven feet by six, and pays for tomorrow with the income they earn today, as millions do on this island that has ballooned to a population of twenty million since independence from France in 1965, but remains “poor,” according to World Bank statistics, with per capita income hovering slightly about $250 per year. It is very much a tany an-dalam-pandrosoana – a country on the road to development – something that Kofi and Barack would surely earmark as an essential human right. I thought working at OTIV (a microfinance started with World Bank funds and technical help from the Canadian aid organization, Développement International Desjardins (DID) – a savings and loan association (SLA, in financial lingo) consisting primarily of agriculteurs (farmers) would teach me about development, and microfinance as a tool in its pursuit.

But I’m learning less about development as defined by Millenium Development Goals (MDGs – not a favourite acronym, for sure) and more about fitivanana – what Westerners/Greeks call agape, what philosophers call ‘The Golden Rule,’ what Christians call The First Commandment. Loving your brother as you love yourself, stemming from fiavanana: the harmony at the base of Malagasy culture, and the reason they, unlike most “poor” countries on this continent, have not had a war in over fifty years.

“So many people come here, and they ask, Why are they not developed?!” recounted Miguel, a French conservation biologist I met during my first week here. “And then you look around, and you think, They’ll never be developed. But after you’ve been here for a while, you realize, they don’t want development.”

They don’t say “developing country” in French. They call it a ‘pays en voie du developpement,’ a country in need of development. It irritates me no end that the Malagasy don’t feel that way.

And on the flip side of the irritation is amazement. I’m speechless, riding a creaky Chinese bicycle through the calm of the rizières (rice fields), gaping when the sun exits its expert hiding spot behind a group of nuages, clouds that bring rain in December and only cold winds in July. I’m astounded to see groups of young, healthy, able-bodied men hanging out on the sidewalk, petra-petraka-ing their day away. The shock continues every time I enter the home of one of Ambatondrazaka’s wealthy families, every time I sit down with my own very wealthy host family to eat a meal of two different kinds of meat, more than most could afford, replete with gourmet Chinese mushrooms, on tablecloths purchased in Tana, the capital.

The shock sometimes becomes apathy when, every morning at a breakfast of Nesquik and pain malgache, I open The Elusive Quest for Growth, a tome by NYU’s very own William Easterly and part of my colloquium reading, that decries past approaches to development.

Because there’s still no blanket solution.

“We just don’t have enough capital,” said my boss, on my second day in Madagascar. “Everyone wants loans, and we don’t have enough épargnes, (savings accounts) to approve them all.”

In New York, an island swimming in tidal waves of cash, I never worry about a dearth of capital. Indeed, our infamous financial crisis of two years ago was the very result of too much disbursed too quickly. But here in Madagascar, after I’ve wiped the dust from my eyes, I continue to see poverty, bad roads, and one too many children with orange hairs that belie protein deficiencies.

“People are poor because they lack access to capital,” Donald Trump once chirped. And one would assume that granting people access to capital starts them on the path out of poverty. But, I’m learning, it isn’t that simple.

“Look around you!” cried one of OTIV’s chefs, on a recent trip to visit a caisse, or local bank, in Andilamena, a small town north of us renowned for its pierres précieuses, or gemstones. “Take a picture!” he gesticulated, pointing to a group of children and their mothers, from whom we were purchasing illegally-harvested charcoal briquettes. “See the poverty of Madagascar! Nous sommes pauvres!”

“Absolutely!” I felt like yelling back. “But so are millions of people in India and China and Albania and Mongolia!”

OTIV works to enable people to pull themselves out of poverty – what we define as the inability to pay for a child’s school tuition, the impossibility of affording a car, and the limitations on disposable income – by providing them with bootstraps: quite simply, capital, in the form of prets (loans) and tahiry (savings).

My knee-jerk reaction to the multiple descriptions of poverty in this green and fertile country has always been, try harder! Perhaps it’s due to an inculcated “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps” philosophy so venerated in America, but here, development has always been an idea brought in from the outside. And most Malagasy are habituated to outside help. This combines with a cultural passivity, bred in schools wherein students are taught to respond, “Oui Madame” instead of asking pointed questions, to produce a country that takes a very laid-back approach to the future, preferring to enjoy roasted misikita while swatting away the incessant flies, rather then worrying about national strategies de lutte contre la pauvreté.

But then, I find myself falling into the trap of blaming poor people for their own poverty. Multiple times a day, I want to grab the shoulders of the graphic dessinateur and marketing coordinatrice – colleagues with whom I’m trying to design a new marketing campaign for OTIV – and shake them up, ask them to be more creative, more innovative, to care more about their own organization.

“But you see, it’s like that,” sighed my host mother, one of the few I’ve met who has travelled à l’extérieur. “Here, when you find an office job, that’s it. You stay put. What else is there? And people just while away their time taking breaks, chatting and chatting. Then they complain that there’s too much work. It’s not like chez toi.”

No, it’s most certainly not what I’m used to, this lackadaisical lifestyle in which the music never stops, the laughter is frequent, babies are not an inconvenience, and Sundays are a day of rest. But I’m learning to suppress my desire to speed things up; I’m learning to appreciate that there’s always enough time for a second cup of tea, for another conversation, for another glass of freshly-pressed orange juice after lunch.

Because no one is in a hurry. No one is rushing toward development.

Interconnected rights and the gap between a good concept and its implementation

by

Becky Asch
Nakuru, Kenya
Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders

Post taken from: http://beckyasch.wordpress.com/

Informal traders in Kenya face a cobweb of interconnected challenges on a daily basis that impact their jobs, housing, income, health, safety, family and security. While it is impossible to isolate these issues, if I had to give an overview of the major ones that stem directly from their informal status, it would include mistreatment by authorities (harassment, bribery, arbitrary arrest and detention), insufficient access to credit on fair terms, exclusion from city and town planning (no designated/legal areas for trade), and a lack of service provisions such as toilet facilities and clean water in their places of work. KENASVIT’s role is to bring together informal traders throughout the country as a trade union (although it is not legally recognized as such) to strengthen their voice and address some of these issues. The Alliance has a revolving loan fund that was dispersed after the post-election violence in 2007-08 to its urban alliances, in which loans are given out at a very low interest rate (5%) with the goal of helping traders restock and rebuild their businesses after the violence. KENASVIT also holds negotiation trainings for their urban alliances, in which members are taught how to approach local authorities with concerns or complaints and come to an agreement (in donor/development terms, “Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)”). Urban alliances use these skills to pressure local authorities to include informal traders in urban planning, which facilitates better conditions of work (toilet facilities, clean water), and a reduction in harassment and other violations as these areas for trade are legally recognized.

It is in this context that I have been working on designing a paralegal training program for KENASVIT’s urban alliance management. Last week I went to Nairobi to meet with Kituo cha Sheria (roughly translates to Station of Law). Kituo is a pro bono law firm/legal empowerment organization. The purpose of the meeting was to propose a partnership between KENASVIT and Kituo, in which Kituo would carry out the paralegal certification training and other related activities. I’ve met with similar organizations, such as the Legal Resources Fund, but they charge an extremely high rate for their services. After a lot of research and correspondence with such firms, I found Kituo to be the perfect match for our goal. The meeting went incredibly well. They were very interested in our program and of course its sustainability (I can never escape that word). A few days later I got an email from the woman I had been in correspondence with accepting the partnership, and informing me that Kituo would be covering the cost of the training!… This is really great news for the program and even though it won’t be implemented before I leave I feel proud and relieved that the groundwork is laid out.

Essentially, the program will look like this: a few members of KENASVIT’s urban alliances from each region will attend a three-week intensive paralegal training program in Nairobi run by Kituo cha Sheria that focuses specifically on issues pertaining to informal traders. This includes harassment, bribery, arbitrary arrest, licensing, confiscation of property, areas for trade, fair hearings, service provisions (access to water and toilets, garbage collection, etc.), and negotiations with relevant authorities. The training will draw from the new constitution, primarily from the Bill of Rights (Chapter 4). Once the training is complete, the paralegals will return to their respective regions and make their knowledge accessible to their members. For instance, the paralegals will hold office hours at their management offices to provide legal advice to those whose rights have been violated. These complaints will be documented and hopefully can be used in future lobbying and negotiation efforts.

Furthermore, the paralegals will hold workshops to sensitize their members on what they have learned. Kituo cha Sheria will then hold “refresher” trainings for the paralegals, and will be available if the paralegals should need advice on how to handle a case. Kituo also has volunteer advocates (pro bono lawyers) around the country, and should a case be particularly significant in terms of setting a precedent for other informal traders, the advocates will take on the cases for free.

Of course, this program is not the silver bullet. Paralegals are not able to represent defendants in court. Even if they could, the court fees alone and time away from work are unaffordable for many traders. The judges are not necessarily willing to rule against askaris (police) or other municipal authorities, and these violations are still rampant. Furthermore, while the new constitution stipulates that defendants are entitled to free legal representation, the government avoids carrying out this responsibility by adding in clever wording (something along the lines of): “if grave injustice is likely to occur”. While people who work in this sector would argue that grave injustices are occurring if only from the overwhelming scale of these violations and the impunity that follows, some who are not so sympathetic could make a case that, while bribery or harassment is wrong, the actual violations themselves are not so serious. The fact is that the regularity of these violations (which, by the way, are violations of international law as well as the new constitution) wears down on informal traders as a sector, leaving them in a perpetually vulnerable position. This is not to downplay their agency and creativity in responding to and combatting this oppression; surely, we have seen (see my previous post) how Migori has been quite successful in this respect, as have other urban alliances. Rather I am trying to say that these responses are constructed and carried out under severe constraints, particularly legal and financial ones. However impressive this resistance may be, it is not something to celebrate, as it emerges and survives from the existence of this very oppression.

The day after the meeting with Kituo, I met up with a man who had been the facilitator at an urban forum in Nakuru a few weeks before. I was very interested in his projects and decided to spend the day with him to find out more about what he does. He ended up taking me to a microfinance institution that he partners with called KENA ROSCAS in Kayole, an impoverished area in Nairobi with a blooming informal sector. KENA ROSCAS was founded by a woman named Nancy Wanjera, who grew up in a slum in Nairobi, was sponsored to go to secondary school graduating at the top of her class, and was then able to attend university. I’ve always been quite skeptical of microfinance as a concept, mainly for two reasons. First, many of them charge an absurdly high interest rate (around 20% or higher), which causes the loan recipients to struggle to pay them back, and contradicts the purported basis for microfinance in the first place. Second, they don’t seem to provide an actual solution to the gap in access to credit. The latter criticism comes from my belief that many efforts that don’t get at the root of the problem merely make the whole system a little more tolerable and therefore perpetuate it, or perhaps worse: they are used as window dressing to avoid genuinely addressing a problem.

In any case, the KENA ROSCAS model made me question my generalized skepticism. The institution seems to fairly, creatively and adequately address the credit and business needs of the people living in Kayole. Before anyone can access a loan or start saving with the institution, they go through training in small business, and receive a passbook to keep track of their savings and balances. Once a group of five has saved their money with KENA ROSCAS for 8 weeks (at 200 KSh per week), a longer-term revolving loan (6 months-1 year) is dispersed to the group. They are allowed to take out 2.5 times what they have saved, and these revolving loans are incremental (they can never take out more than they can afford to pay back). The other kind of loan is an emergency loan, for instance when a stall owner needs to pay for a shipment that morning and doesn’t have the capital at that time. Those are either 5,000 or 10,000 KSh, the interest (10%) is higher than the revolving loans, and they are paid back quicker. For collateral, members document certain assets that they have (possibly a television, refrigerator, etc.), and KENA ROSCAS staff go to their residences to confirm this. The institution requires its members to use their savings to get various kinds of insurance (health, business and life). Finally, they are also trying to invest some of their profit into purchasing land to sell to youth living in slums at affordable rates and terms so that they can have land titles, which can serve as collateral among other things to be able to access credit. I guess what I learned is that, while many microfinance models seem to take advantage of people in need of credit and don’t address the root of the problem, if done honestly, with a deep understanding of people’s needs and conditions, and with the intention of sustaining (there’s that word again) and expanding a business instead of just making a quick profit, they can be really important and beneficial.

By the end of the weekend I was completely fried and happy to get back to Nakuru. But the week ahead of me was just as busy, minus the traveling. KENASVIT hosted meetings all week – of the Management Committee, the National Executive Committee – this meant that representatives from all over the country came into Nakuru, and the office was hectic! It was great because I hadn’t gotten to meet many of them, and those that I had gotten to meet I had a chance to see again. The meetings lasted all day for 4 days. It was really nice to hear about all of the issues each region is dealing with and the progress they have made. I also got a chance to share what I’ve done since coming to KENASVIT, particularly updating the management on the new developments in the paralegal program (and drinking LOTS of tea).

On Wednesday (the 29th), I took a break from the management meetings to meet with the Kenya Association of Motorcycle Owners and Drivers. I had met one of their board members at the urban forum a few weeks back and he invited me to attend one of their weekly meetings and speak with them. They meet in a building on the side of the road made of corrugated iron, lined on the inside with planks of wood for seating. About 30 of them came, and invited me into the building. The first 20 minutes of the meeting was spent paying back their loans. Most of the boda drivers’ goal is to own a motorcycle (if they have to borrow one, they pay 300 KSh to the owner per day, and an average day for them is 700 KSh before paying to rent the bike). Faulu, a microfinance institution here in Nakuru, gives 50,000 KSh loans to the drivers at a 20% interest rate, which the drivers then use to put a down payment on a bike (the total cost is 96,000 KSh, but one of the bike companies, Haojue, allows them to put 50K down and pay the rest back within a year). But the members are really struggling to pay back the loans, and have very little money to spend on a daily basis, which of course becomes especially difficult when they have families to support. Still, the members all contribute 50 KSh per week to the association to build up its own type of revolving loan fund and/or contingency fund (if a driver has hospital fees to pay, for example). Ultimately, their goal as an association is to build up this fund enough that they can loan money to members independent of institutions like Faulu, and then to send one of their members to be trained to be an instructor, so that he (I have never seen a female boda driver) can then train other members to get their licenses at a lower rate. As individuals, they want to own a bike, pay off their loans, and then expand their business, either by buying a second bike to rent out or buying a matatu, ultimately with the goal of owning land (a few of their members do own two bikes and rent one out). I was really amazed, although maybe I shouldn’t be, at their organization and progress, especially considering the association is only two years old.

Next week KENASVIT is hosting a regional conference/workshop in Nairobi to develop a campaign plan for action for the next few years. I am really looking forward to hearing from the representatives from other African countries and comparing their experiences and efforts to those I have been observing and experiencing, particularly that of their relationship to the state and the law. I’ll talk more about that in my next post.

Community Media and VSF: Rough Sketches

by

Arielle Milkman
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Voluntarios Sin Fronteras

During my time in Buenos Aires, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know and participate in several exciting projects that aim to reinvent media as a tool of social inclusion. I want to do them all justice in detailed posts, so in this first formal blog entry I will simply briefly introduce one of the projects, Impulso Voluntario, a community magazine sponsored by Voluntarios Sin Fronteras. In later entries I will problematize each experience further, and recount my fieldwork in greater depth.

I am working with my host organization, Voluntarios sin Fronteras, in two major capacities. The first is the supervision of the VSF’s community magazine, Impulso Voluntariado. We currently have eight adolescents participating in the project, in which the participants photograph and document social projects in the city of Buenos Aires, as well as the activities of VSF. The members of this year’s magazine staff range from 15 to 24 years old, and travel from Villa Lujano, Villa Soldati, and Villa Retiro to participate in the project. Each of these neighborhoods has its own very specific social context, but generally speaking, they are some of the most precarious zones of Buenos Aires.

person setting up video cameraAs the courses in design, narrative journalism and photography we offer as part of the magazine’s curriculum are held in VSF’s office in the center of Buenos Aires, most of the students have to travel for at two hours to attend class. Additionally, the courses are generally held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30-8 p.m., which means that the students must return to their houses, often alone, after dark. During the first week of the program, Cintia, who had just recently moved to Buenos Aires from the province of Misiones, was robbed near her house as she tried to return from the center around 9 p.m. After the incident, Cintia’s mother said she couldn’t participate in the project, as coming back late at night could be dangerous.

In order to keep Cintia in the magazine, we created an earlier course so that she would be able to return home during the day, instead of at night.

Cintia and her peers earn a scholarship of 200 pesos a month (roughly 50 U.S. dollars) in exchange for their participation in Impulso Voluntario. Nonetheless, some of the students are consistently tardy or absent in classes, which slows down the progress of the magazine.
In order to organize the narrative journalism class, I proposed the creation of a blog for the group, which now serves as a documentation of the project and a place for the students to store their texts while they work on improving them for the final edition of the magazine.

students studyingMost of the students weren’t originally familiar with blogs, and explaining the process was a bit of a challenge. Most of the magazine’s participants don’t have access to internet in their houses, and some have limited computer skills. The students in the narrative journalism class proposed the title Periodistas Voluntarios (Volunteer Journalists) for the blog, which can now be accessed at http://periodistasvoluntarios2011.blogspot.com/.

The spirit behind this project is absolutely positive, but as I have been working with the kids and the team of volunteers involved in the magazine, I can’t help but think of ways I would change the project to improve it. Preserving VSF’s basic model of a community magazine produced by adolescents from precarious neighborhoods, I would restructure the magazine by producing its contents in one specific neighborhood. I would work with adolescents from one neighborhood, instead of three, and I would set up classes to be taught in the neighborhood, instead of in a neutral environment a two-hour bus ride away. Community media works when it is localized and focused on a specific beat, for a specific public. The problem with Impulso Voluntario, VSF’s magazine, is that the adolescents who write and design each issue are placed into unknown contexts, which are often uninteresting to them. They are often asked to cover events hosted by VSF, which have little direct impact on their communities. From my perspective, a community magazine based in the neighborhoods the participants live and work in would be much more effective as a legitimate project of social inclusion and cultural expression.group photo