Perspectives on problems

I'm currently teaching a volunteerism class to the seniors at one of Cajabamba's all-girls high schools. When their social studies class was learning about what it means to be a volunteer, these girls invited me to come as a guest speaker. After hearing them ask so many questions and seeing their interest in the idea of volunteering, I asked their teacher if she'd be interested in delving deeper into the topic, and thus the project was born.

In five or six sessions, we'll cover the basic steps of planning a volunteer project: identifying a problem, analyzing its causes and consequences, brainstorming possible solutions and choosing the most effective and feasible, planning the steps of the project and acquiring the necessary resources and support, the importance of monitoring and evaluation of results, and of course actually implementing the project.

Drawing problem trees to analyze causes and consequences

The classes are going incredibly well so far, with lots of enthusiasm from the girls. One of the most interesting parts from my point of view has been the day we identified problems that the students see in their community. Some of the issues the various groups of students have decided to tackle include: negative interactions between different groups within their school (teachers, administrators, different sections and grades of students); domestic violence; child labor (not the young factory workers Americans tend to envision when we hear this term, but rather the all-too-common occurrence in the Peruvian campo of rural children not completing a basic education in order to help their families with farmwork); alcoholism; and abortion.

Abortion is a choice that I don't think you would find among the identified problems if this project were assigned to U.S. students. This is not to say that no student in the States believes abortion is a problem; on the contrary, we are taught to be conscious of the fact that abortion is a very polemic issue about which many Americans hold strong and opposing opinions. For that very reason, students (and their public school teacher) would avoid defining the availability of abortion as a problem in the context of a group project - most likely, not all members of the group would be comfortable with that assertion. Peru, however, is a ~97% Catholic country where abortion is still 99% illegal: all abortions except those performed out of necessity to save the woman's life or prevent serious harm to her health are punishable by law. In this cultural context, it is perfectly normal for students at a public school (which despite being public, is run by Catholic nuns) to identify the practice of abortion as a problem in the world. So while I helped the girls analyze their "problem" as I did all the other groups of students, this evidence of such difference in perspectives between countries was some interesting food for thought.