Class 3 Wrap-Up

A brief case study of the instructors' experiences in Uganda was presented in the class to provoke dialogue and serve as an introduction to Cat Quinn's presentation on Concern America.

Main points presented:

1. A group of young student from the United States were compelled to go to Uganda after watching a documentary film.
   
   
2. In Uganda, they were introduced to a community-based organization working to alleviate the consequences of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
   
   
3. The organization asked the group to help them build an orphanage to house and educate some of the many children orphaned by AIDS in rural Southwestern Uganda.
   
   
4. After extensive research back in the United States, the students found that orphanages should only be used as a last resort. Instead, studies unanimously support community-based solutions that keep children in the homes of relatives or neighbors.
   
   
5. The student group switched their focus, from building an orphanage to addressing the psycho/social needs of orphaned children through art empowerment projects. These projects offered community members an opportunity to share their stories using art as a means of expression.
   
   
6. The community-based organization does not understand the necessity of art projects in the context of obvious material needs.
   
   
7. Lack of understanding leads to mistrust which strains and ultimately dissolves the relationship between the student group and the Ugandan community based-organization.

Questions to consider:

• What went wrong?
• Did the students make a mistake by going to Uganda in the first place?
• Should they have responded to the explicit desire of the community by building an orphanage? Or were they right to follow the unanimous recommendations of researchers?
• Is it right to continue with a project that addresses a need that's not a priority within the community?
• How is trust built between two groups coming into collaboration with their own preconceived notions and returning to completely different realities?

Presentation and Discussion with Cat Quinn

The brief analysis of this case study was followed by a presentation and Q + A session with Cat Quinn from the international NGO Concern America.

The screening of a documentary film that chronicles the 35-year history and philosophies of Concern America was a starting point for a conversation that touched on the topics of popular education and the dangers of 'good intentions.'

At the end of her presentation, Cat read the following story from the Training for Transformation guide to introduce the journal prompt for our next class.

Remember the following prompt is only a SUGGESTION. You can write your journal entry about any topic that interests or excites you or any thoughts you'd like to voice or explore. What sparks your imagination? With all of that said...

The Prompt:

After reading the passage below by Anne Hope think about a time when you were entering a community/group as either an "expert" or on the other end as a community/group member.

A few questions to think about...

What did you learn from this experience? What does it mean to be an "expert?" What qualifications did this person have to be considered an "expert?" Was there a need for an outside expert to come into the community?

If you can't think of any personal experiences, then comment on the following passage.

Anne Hope, Training for Transformation:

This exercise was developed from a real life experience in Uganda in 1959. A village had numerous problems in both the health field (all types of worms, malaria, no clinic) and a very poor school from which the teachers were nearly always absent. In a village meeting the people really did insist that their top priority was to make a football field. I was appalled but the CDO very wisely encouraged the group to go ahead. They made their football field, started playing football, organized a team, played matches against other villages. The football field was a turning point in the life of the village. They had gained self-confidence, a structure for communicating with one another, and a sense that they were capable of changing things. Later they tackled many other, "more important" projects. But were they really more important? Was not their own intuition that they needed something that would build their own sense of themselves as a community, and their confidence that they could achieve their own goals, far more important than my outsider priority that they needed a clinic? This was also a turning point in my own education about how to work with communities. Later I heard many other stories of how football fields had helped deal with serious problems of teenage drinking.

>Harishi