Dear Susan,
Today, I walked through a true slum, and I wasn't so much scared for my life as I was scared for humanity. I began volunteering with TIP, the organization I told you about earlier, working with a marginalized minority group/s. The experience has already proved to be a strange paradox between amazingly horrible and amazingly uplifting. I will start by saying the city we work in resembles everything you would see in a 3rd World country. I mean, kids playing in trash, trash being burned, shoe-less children, houses without roofs, families squatting in ruined buildings. The one thing missing is a goat, and I was told today that an NGO attempted to provide the village with a goat as a way to bring a milk and dairy supply into the area, but deemed the city too poor. They would have to kill the animal for meat for survival before it could make milk. I mean, one moment, I was helping to brainstorm new sustainable economic programming ideas for the city we work with and organizing a clean-up day in a local park, and the next moment, I was walking down a street where tons of children, scantily clothed and dirty, were running towards me trying to shake my hand. We visited a family where we shared tea while sitting on towels on the ground which served as chairs and listened to a mother talk about her child whose throat glands were swollen to the point of needing medical attention.
One (of the many) problems these people face is that the kids of this community are denied entrance into school -- at first, they were literally denied schooling by laws set in place by the ministry, now they are discreetly denied education because the school will require them to produce things like birth certificates, fees, and vaccinations -- all of which these families cannot obtain due to displacement, poverty, and the life they've always had to live. And so TIP is educating them on Saturdays and Sundays and helping them to work out registration for school and once these kids get into school, TIP advocates for them to be treated fairly, equally, and justly. They also provide transportation to and from school -- a necessity because the roads are busy and dangerous and the majority population will hassle these children -- the girls, actually, fear kidnapping. TIP also works to start jobs for the adults; they've set up a soap and bag making business for the women (can you guess your next set of presents? ;)) and a shoe shinning business for the men. Again, good work, but there is a good chance, I will be crying myself to sleep on the nights I help out in the village.
On a positive side, this blog post is not complaining about my day job.
xoxo,
Allison
Today, I walked through a true slum, and I wasn't so much scared for my life as I was scared for humanity. I began volunteering with TIP, the organization I told you about earlier, working with a marginalized minority group/s. The experience has already proved to be a strange paradox between amazingly horrible and amazingly uplifting. I will start by saying the city we work in resembles everything you would see in a 3rd World country. I mean, kids playing in trash, trash being burned, shoe-less children, houses without roofs, families squatting in ruined buildings. The one thing missing is a goat, and I was told today that an NGO attempted to provide the village with a goat as a way to bring a milk and dairy supply into the area, but deemed the city too poor. They would have to kill the animal for meat for survival before it could make milk. I mean, one moment, I was helping to brainstorm new sustainable economic programming ideas for the city we work with and organizing a clean-up day in a local park, and the next moment, I was walking down a street where tons of children, scantily clothed and dirty, were running towards me trying to shake my hand. We visited a family where we shared tea while sitting on towels on the ground which served as chairs and listened to a mother talk about her child whose throat glands were swollen to the point of needing medical attention.
One (of the many) problems these people face is that the kids of this community are denied entrance into school -- at first, they were literally denied schooling by laws set in place by the ministry, now they are discreetly denied education because the school will require them to produce things like birth certificates, fees, and vaccinations -- all of which these families cannot obtain due to displacement, poverty, and the life they've always had to live. And so TIP is educating them on Saturdays and Sundays and helping them to work out registration for school and once these kids get into school, TIP advocates for them to be treated fairly, equally, and justly. They also provide transportation to and from school -- a necessity because the roads are busy and dangerous and the majority population will hassle these children -- the girls, actually, fear kidnapping. TIP also works to start jobs for the adults; they've set up a soap and bag making business for the women (can you guess your next set of presents? ;)) and a shoe shinning business for the men. Again, good work, but there is a good chance, I will be crying myself to sleep on the nights I help out in the village.
On a positive side, this blog post is not complaining about my day job.
xoxo,
Allison
I am so proud of you and the work you are doing! It is amazing to me that people all over the world still live like this! You are working to make it better on so many levels!
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