So Plan,
formally Plan International, is an NGO with a primary focus on children’s
rights: the right to live in healthy environments, the right to economic
security, the right to education, the right to citizenship, among others. In Senegal, most of Plan’s work centers on
the adoption of communities and the creation of advisory councils encompassing
all ages and types of people to make decisions about community projects. These projects often involve health
initiatives (like improving hospitals and medical centers), water and
sanitation initiatives (like supporting safe well projects), and economic
empowerment activities. Currently, one
of Plan’s nationwide projects is the Youth Economic Empowerment program – and
that’s the one I’ve been working on.
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| My favorite guard Fall poses in front of Plan's Thies Office |
Since I’m
technically a health volunteer (though not a technical one! Ha!), my
participation in a “Youth Economic Empowerment” program may surprise and even
frighten you. It inspired those emotions
in me, after all. Lisa, who doesn’t
really understand the interest rates on her student loans and still hasn’t
grasped what the whole Bernie Madoff thing was about, was invited to play a
pivotal role here? Yes. Just... yes.
More
specifically, Plan wanted Peace Corps’ help in developing a Life Skills
curriculum for their Youth Savings and Loans groups. These groups were composed of young adults,
mostly women, who had dropped out of school and were being taught basic
financial literacy and savings methods.
To push the groups farther in hopes of having them USE their new
financial knowledge, Plan wanted a program that would make them stronger, more
confident community members and do things like become leaders, start their own
businesses, and use their new money to fully benefit themselves and their
families. Life Skills, as an idea,
usually means a curriculum that builds confidence, increases communication
skills, fosters critical thinking and decision-making, and informs about health
and gender concepts. Life Skills lessons
seemed like a great fit for these groups of young people.
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| Here's a picture of me doing important work with a flipchart! |
So that’s
where Peace Corps came in, or, more specifically, a Peace Corps Response
volunteer named Bethany... and me!
Bethany had already finished her Peace Corps service and was on the cusp
of starting her Masters in Public Health.
She started building our curriculum based on a similar program in Niger,
and to find out what lessons were needed in Senegal, visited the Youth Savings and
Loans groups to informally survey them.
Her results showed what lessons would benefit the groups most, among
them communication, confidence, early marriage and pregnancy, resolving
conflicts, and sexual violence. In
developing these lessons, she incorporated lots of small skits, stories, and
discussion questions meant to make the lessons participatory – not only forcing
everyone to think outside the box a little bit, but also encouraging young
Senegalese girls, often notoriously terrified of public speaking, to become
comfortable discussing and debating.
Bethany had
most of the manual finished when she left for grad school, and my task was to
finish the manual, organize teacher trainings, and monitor the program during
its early stages. It took awhile for all
of the stars to align, but finally, this past May, after final edits and a
training seminar and many confusing months in between, Senegalese field agents
started teaching our program to the Youth Savings and Loans groups. So this past summer, a lot of my work has
involved observing their classes, meeting with the facilitators to clarify the
lessons and get their feedback, and finding ways to improve the program
overall.
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| One of the Kaolack YSL groups after their Life Skills meeting |
I have found
this process incredibly fun in the nerdiest possible way. I made documents to record all of my
observations and “qualitative data” (THERE I GO AGAIN! Nerd.) and researched
ways to easily monitor the program’s impact.
I visited urban classes and rural classes, endlessly impressed by the
teachers I’d helped train months earlier and their ability to goad semi-sulky
teenagers into talking about the consequences of marrying at age 13. And I fell into endlessly fascinating and
informative discussions with the teachers themselves on everything to the
merits of birth control, the problem of domestic violence, and the pride
Senegalese women derive from gender distinctions in work. I had to swallow my own pride at times,
realizing that parts of our program that I loved simply didn’t work for them –
and this project wasn’t mine, but theirs.
And sometimes, when the teachers insisted that certain topics, like sex
outside of marriage, couldn’t be addressed, we managed to find happy mediums
that informed the groups sensitively. So
I didn’t lose every fight.
Ultimately,
I changed our Holy Life Skills Grail, “THE MANUAL” as I call it, according to
the suggestions I received and the experiences I had. It now boasts an easier to follow format
recommended to me by the teachers (who are used to strict parameters in
lessons), a section in each lesson relating to specific community problems,
explicit exercises in critical thinking to consider the causes, consequences,
and choices of issues, and an economic connection for each subject. I also added some evaluation measures that
can check informational retention and skill ability by groups, if supervisors
choose to use them. I feel like I have
given birth to a healthy baby after a long gestation. And I have no post-partum.
SO. That’s what I do a lot of the time! And moreover, the lengthiness above is why I
so often avoid trying to explain it.
Believe me, it took me long enough to figure out the ins and outs of
this job myself. But on the whole, I’ve
come to really value the project, and I do believe that encouraging critical
thinking and healthy decision-making is one of the best development endeavors
to be done. I can’t really change the
day-to-day life of Senegalese people, but the Senegalese people can. And I believe in this program’s ability to
help people start thinking more creatively and pushing themselves farther than
they might have before. Maybe some of
them will even go on to start their own businesses or become community
leaders. Personally, I’d be completely
content if it merely shifted the expectations and parameters for even a few
families.
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| Aissatou is president of her YSL group and used a loan to buy a refrigerator and start her own ice selling business (quite the enterprise in the hot trenches of Senegal). She wants to become a certified Life Skills trainer now too. Yay success stories! |
And even
though the curriculum for the project is now set, the work is not done! At the end of September, I’ll be leading a
training with Plan to extend the program to two more regions of Senegal, Louga
and St. Louis, and then in December, we’ll be training peer educators to be
Life Skills trainers as well. In
between, I’m hoping to lead the program myself at the middle school near my
house. Wish me luck!
I hope
everyone has enjoyed this second installment of “WHAT LISA DOES WHEN YOU THINK
SHE’S JUST EATING CHEETOS IN AFRICA.” See you next time!
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