How do we do this?

With the Young Visionaries contest grant I would utilize the money to run and facilitate peer education and alternative healthy sexuality education workshops. This knowledge would allow young women to unpack the cultural, social and political hegemony of sexual and reproductive health. Using the role of education and the media in shaping identities and ideas about our bodies. These workshops would facilitate the conversations in understanding the ways that our bodies have been co-opted by media, a corporate and pharmaceutical agenda and by the neo-liberal political organizing structures which has encouraged a dependence, not on ourselves, but on these forces to shape and construct ideas of normalcy and healthy sexuality. Through participation in these workshops the young women involved would be able to construct their lived reality of sexual health in something that was based on advocacy and autonomy to make the right choices for their lives and the community they live within. This experience would provide the opportunity to prepare policy and education ideas and methods to take to local school boards and levels of government in order to enact real time change.

For 1 month, the student team from McMaster University that I was a part of applied the principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry is way of asking questions and envisioning the future. The goal is to build positive relationships. In so doing, it enhances a system’s capacity for collaboration and change.

Our role was to ask a lot of pointed and open questions about the health situation of people living in the area. We asked questions about people’s experiences utilizing the health systems and in this way we learned about the challenges and gaps. We were not there to build a well or a school, because that would be unsustainable. We were there learning about the situations the Garwahl people find themselves in and why, and exchanging information and stories from our experiences. We were also challenging ourselves, since we were navigating through the foothills, and making our way to these villages everyday.

One day, we walked 8 kilometers to a village called Quashi. Here, we organized a group of young girls from grades 3-6 and spoke to them about reproductive health and what they knew about their bodies. We learned that although reproductive biology was part of the science curriculum the science teachers, who were male, skipped the female reproductive system in their lessons. This school had only recently received a latrine for girls. During menses, many girls missed class.

We learned that the female teacher who joined us in facilitating the discussion was the only female teacher and mentor to these girls. And for many years, there were no female teachers at this school.

If I had a $1000 grant I would return to Quashi to implement a girls (reproductive) health support group. By building capacity in senior female students and teaching them about sexual and reproductive health/biology, they can be empowered to pass this information to younger girls. This project can be sustainable. I would like to support these girls by teaching them the information they may not be aware of, and also would like to inspire knowledge creation amongst themselves. The grant money would be used to supply initial resources – information sheets and workshop material. As well, we would brainstorm how to generate income for this support group, so it could be sustained in years to come.

I believe this issue is most likely prevalent in other communities we visited in the Garwahl area. The grant would be used to conduct a survey of the schools and any the knowledge the girl students have about their bodies and sexual health.

Additionally, I believe SMTA could play a role in engaging the school boards to encourage that this education takes place in schools for girls. Considering that discussing sexual health may be considered taboo or inappropriate for young girls, we will need to work with women, girls, teachers and SMTA health workers to brainstorm solutions and initiatives that can be placed to ensure girls are empowered and informed.