Monthly Archives: September 2014

(Sorry this is so late Shelby! But better late than never…right?)

So for my research project, I started out by saying last semester that I wanted to do something in regards to HIV/AIDS, women’s rights and poverty. All those topics are incredibly intriguing and already have much material written on them, but they were also topics I have focused and dealt with in various other research papers for other classes. My motivation for writing my research proposal last semester was often times lacking, because I think I was not dealing with anything new or out of my usual academic comfort zone. My presentation at the end of last semester was also a bust, partly due to my inability to entirely focus on one specific topic, since I had at least twenty-five other ideas running through my head.

I kept my eyes open for a new research topic when we went abroad this summer. I was open to any and every thing that we encountered, whether it be a university lecture or a late night walk in a local marketplace/bazaar with friends. I just kept looking for something new to excite me. Women’s and children’s rights/ healthcare/ education/ nutrition/ sexual empowerment? Awesome! (I’m not being sarcastic; these are extremely in-depth research matters in which I could go on forever). These are topics that I am sure my classmates and I are so exceptionally passionate about, which is really great. I am 120% in favor of doing a topic like this, especially with a class full of budding feminists and women, and indeed have done and read many papers on these subjects. You can never learn enough about something. But I definitely felt like it was time for me to choose a new research topic, one that I didn’t always use as an intriguing yet constant fallback option. I need(ed) something new to entice me and keep me up at night that wasn’t caused by stress-writing or exhaustion, but by an insatiable lust for the unknown.

Since I stayed in Lanka for an extra month due to the internship, I was really able to take some time and think about my research there, instead of being distracted back home. Meditation and Buddhism (its teachings and practices as well as manner of living), had always intrigued me growing up, but I literally got to put that interest into practice during the internship. I struggled with it very much, but kept at it because it felt like something I needed and had been missing in my life for so long. I have always been one to see my mind as both a safe haven as well as a prison. Meditation and its centering on inner thought and effects on the self are some things I would like to explore more thoroughly and incorporate into my own life. I spoke with Dr. Siegle before class today, and I definitely got more insight into narrowing down my topic and which path I want to take in my approach towards Buddhism. However, I still have so much research and reading to do (to educate and inform myself, first and foremost, especially on the basics) that I am afraid I will run out of time on finding resources, as well as run out of time on narrowing down what I actually want to learn more about. Currently, I am thinking about Buddhism, but the topics of food security, sex, linguistics and another good old fallback of development keep popping up in my mind. That’s what I’m thinking about now, unless, I change my topic again in the next two weeks.

 Stefanie Froelich

Over the summer, I had the privilege of getting involved at Sarvodaya Headquarters in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I realized that everyone seemed to be getting settled in with their research ideas and what they were going to be doing for the next month, except for me. That was until I met Maraliya. Maraliya was born in Sri Lanka but was adopted by a Dutch couple when she was three weeks old. She grew up in the Netherlands but she always felt the need to come back to her home country to study something she had always been interested in – the rights of women. While in college, she was able to do a study that she named, “Psychological Problems due to Rape Resulting in Pregnancy or Having a Child, among Sri Lankan Girls and Young Women.” For her master’s thesis, she wanted to extend her studies in this particular field.

I was the Metta Convention when I first met Maraliya. She told me about her interests and her heart for women, especially ones who have been physically abused by men. I found myself so overwhelmed with what I heard yet interested to find out more about what exactly it was that she wanted to accomplish. A few days later, it just so happened that Maraliya came to Sarvodaya to speak to Bandula, one of our coordinators of our study abroad program. I got to sit down and talk with her about what she wanted to get done as a part of her research and how she was going to do it. By the end of our conversation, we had planned to travel to different organizations all over Sri Lanka that supported women’s rights as abused victims of rape, violence and abuse.

For the next few weeks we were able to meet with directors of women’s organizations and we even got to meet some of the women that were a part of the centers.

As the days went on and the meetings continued, I realized that I was getting more and more interested on the topic of rape and sexual violence against women in this country. I was asking questions like, “How are these women getting raped and who is raping them? Are these rapists morally aware of what they are doing? What are their consequences? Are these women getting any support?”

I found out that a lot of these men don’t think that what they are doing is wrong. I also found out that these rape victims usually feel at fault for what has happened to them. I became interested in knowing the options and available resources for these particular women who have had these issues in the past.

There are many questions I have about the idea of rape and how it can be so predominant in a country, however, I realize that I can only study a small section of the huge spectrum that this issue covers. I would like to study the resources that are available to women/girls that have been raped in the past and are struggling with their self-identity now. In order to do so, I would be interested in knowing what kinds of issues these girls face and how it has impacted their quality of life.

As a part of this study, I would love to find out what is available to these organizations and women in Sri Lanka now and ways in which we can improve them. Whether it’s more safe areas for these women or if it’s programs that show them their sense of worth, I would be interested in finding out what kinds of solutions there are to this huge problem with rape and regret associated with rape.

Like most things in my life, I made this project much more complicated than it needs to be. Meaning—after months of grueling research and writing, I threw it all away and started again from scratch. I decided to research something much more profound than my former subject and in my opinion much more interesting: how to be happy.

In Sri Lanka, I started my project by asking random people I encountered during travels one simple question: “What makes you happy?” Every time I asked, the respondent answered that whatever they were doing for a living at the moment made them happy. This interested me—I’m used to work being the reason people are unhappy.

Subsequently upon my return to America, I found a documentary called Happy that employed a similar research method as mine, except they used people from all over the world as a sample. Whether the interviewee was a rickshaw driver in India, an alligator hunter from Louisiana, or whatever, all of the interviewees were happy in large part because they were doing what made them happy.

No concept could be so simple and complicated at the same time. As a liberal arts student who is about to graduate and join the real world, I grappled with this idea of “doing what makes you happy” since I picked my major. So while objectivity is important for research, I think that my personal struggle is going to enhance the process, and I think that my audience will be able to relate easily to the research.

Right now, I want to first conceptualize happiness and familiarize myself with its causes, its chemistry, its dimensions, etc. I want to focus my project on something the film Happy referred to as “flow,” a feeling of happiness and contentedness that results from complete pleasure and satisfaction in your work. I hope to present my research as a tool for others to navigate how to achieve flow and access overall happiness.

I have lofty goals for my project and a very long road ahead of me before I reach the finish line. I need to start reading up on things immediately and crank out a new proposal. Right now however, I’m very glad to have a new research idea that excites me. Here’s hoping that I achieve some flow during my process that will speed things along.

It’s been about 2 months since I’ve been back from abroad, and I’m still trying to assign words to how I feel about it. Currently, I am still digesting and piecing together a narrative of the observations that I made while I was away. When they’d happen, I’d quickly pen them into my journal – and now I am drawing conclusions, parallels, and even more interesting observations with the superpower of hindsight.

Originally, I was going to conduct interviews and take down narratives to get an insider’s perspective on the dance traditions of the area. Upon arriving, however, it was very difficult to make the women I was speaking to feel safe enough to speak honestly to me. I decided then to be a little sneakier- and just observe and participate in as much dancing as I possibly could.

One particular instance, I think, presents a more interesting perspective than one I could’ve ever possibly gotten from interviews. Westerners commonly mistake solo, improvised dance as something that is danced for women, by women; meaning, that it is not danced publically. While that is not true, a very interesting thing happens when it is danced privately. I was dancing in a Berber woman’s home in Ain Leuh with a group of four other women – three from my cohort, the fourth was another local Berber woman. The woman whose home we were in cautiously closed the door to the room, and then the shutters on the windows. Then, she began dancing fiercely- like, Beyonce fiercely. She whipped off her hijab and began twirling her waist long hair. She danced on her knees, flipping her hair in circles as if she were rather flipping the bird to the patriarchy.

Dancing privately for women created this environment of societal dissent, which is not present in the dance when it is danced publically. In a small group of women, this woman said, “we understand each other. We understand patriarchal oppression, even if it may be in different ways.” It was a moment of solidarity and trust, a moment of sisterly love, and a moment of understanding. It was a moment of fleeting sadness that in order to dance (and express) freely, we had to close the window shutters. This was in stark contrast to the dancing I experienced when I (inadvertently) crashed a wedding celebration in Azrou.

I’d like to focus on this contrast in my research paper, using evidence of western fetishization and orientalism to support the use of dance to express dissent. I will also look for more materials that support this observation. It is common for westerners to believe that solo, improvised dance is an expression of oneself that is sexual or sensual in nature, but actually it is an expression of culture, of celebration, of solidarity, and of dissent.

I feel that I would be in a similar place if I had kept my original plan. Since this subject isn’t exactly new, I feel that I am in a good place and not starting again from square one.

By Kate Fitzgerald

Upon our journey to Morocco, I unfortunately hit a brick a wall with my research. As I have shared many times, the case study I was looking to do with Transparency Maroc fell through. I was unable to contact them or get interviews with them due to their fear of speaking about so controversial an issue. After reviewing my first draft from last semester, I realized a large part of my method consisted of an equation. I was looking to use an equation to develop a method for NGOs to see the most effective ways to use their social media during protest situations. I used elements such as amount of times hashtags are repeated, rate at which it was spread and the network size that it reached. I wanted to apply this equation to my case study, but I will now have to figure out a different way to integrate it. I’ve decided to change my method entirely and use this equation only as a supporting detail. I’ve recently been inspired by the Israeli conflict and the use of apps by the government to warn about bombings. Two apps in particular were used during protests to communicate with loved ones, and to provide a general alert for the bombings. I want to explore what the government did right and what it did wrong in supplying these two apps. Ultimately I would like to create or suggest a draft model for an app to be created by NGOs. Instead of relying on Facebook or twitter history to prove my point of efficacy I can develop something entirely different. My boyfriend fortunately is a computer science major and I am hoping he will be able to work with me this semester in creating a very basic app. If creating the app itself will not work out, I want to at least make a creative poster or web demo of what I would aspire it to look like and what I hope it could include. Even if I can’t create an app I can start to brush the surface of what would be involved. This app would serve for NGOs specifically rather than government based to provide safety warnings, information, communication mediums with loved ones, and inspiration from other protests going on. I am hoping to get in contact/get feedback from creators of apps similar to this one. This will help me incorporate my equation. I will ask them questions of the logistics to see if it is possible within the actual app to record peak usage times and how much they can see of who uses it and how often. This will be much easier than finding this on Facebook or Twitter because they are big companies that aren’t necessarily going to release that kind of information. It is helping me narrow it down from a huge platform of Facebook to a controlled environment of one app. If anyone else knows of any resources that might be helpful for this app creation (websites/guidelines/how tos) or has any computer science major friends that could help me with this I would really appreciate the support!

After a summer abroad, my research topic seemed a little not so adequate anymore. I knew my feelings about my topic would change, what I didn’t know is when, where and why.

Here’s when and where, the month and a half spent in Sri Lanka.

Here’s why…

Morocco and Turkey was a great experience, but brief. It got me thinking about all the different opportunities and topics I could possibly research with all the first hand experience I got. But, I was never able to really delve deep into anything because just as soon as I got a new idea, another experience had me thinking of something else. It was a consequence of the fast paced itinerary we had during our month abroad, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it got me thinking a lot about a lot.

Skip to Sri Lanka, after the rest of our study abroad group had left and only the few interns stayed back for more weeks of exploring Sri Lanka, on our own terms. Interning with sarvodaya was a worthwhile and enriching experience. I learned a lot about just how a development NGO, and not just any organization, but a Buddhist bottom-up structured organization, works within the country. Sarvodaya could be deemed as a somewhat successful developmental organization with it hands on everything from providing micro-financing to rural communities to providing safe houses for pregnant young women who had been raped and/or abused. Sarvodaya’s reach went all throughout the most remote parts of Sri Lanka affecting over 1500 villages throughout the island. As someone who is very interested in global development, mainly how to best implement development, studying this organizations’ structure and how to replicate and who has replicated it seemed, and still seems like a good idea for a project.

Except for a thought I had during the final weeks on my internship.

The first couple days at Sarvodaya the interns and I were trying to decide just how to best spend our time with the organization. Although I wanted to learn more about Sarvodaya’s development projects I had met a Dutch women, Maraliya, who worked for Sarvodaya as their secretary for the Netherlands. The interesting thing about Maraliya was that she was born in Sri Lanka, to Sri Lankan parents, and adopted by a couple from the Netherlands.  She had met her birth parents 10 years ago and has since then been visiting Sri Lanka every year for about 10 years. She decided to head a research project on the island focusing on young women who have been victims of rape and incest and specifically the cases that resulted in teen pregnancies. She was in the beginning stages of a supplementary research project focusing on why some rape survivors are more psychologically resilient than others, and invited another intern and me to accompany her while she prepared to do her field work.

Meeting her was a stroke of luck, I was able to travel around the Island visiting different women’s centers and meeting the people behind those centers and the women living at them. Both being extraordinary and inspiring people. I learned a lot about sexuality in Sri Lankan culture and just how much of a “sexually closed” culture it was.  I already had an idea about just how modest the culture was, I was told to cover up before going and how to behave. But what I had no idea was jut how at fault women are found for anything having to do with their own sexuality. I had heard a story about a young women being raped by her father, and the village, instead of directing their distaste towards the father, directed it at the young women because for some reason the women HAD to be at fault. She MUST of done something or said something to her father to have him react in the way he did. So shame on her, for being forcibly raped by the one man she’s supposed to trust, for unwillingly losing her virginity, for being a powerless women. The villagers shunned her, the father probably didn’t go to prison but even if he did the punishment for rape is never for more than a couple of weeks. She was forced to uproot her life, while the perpetrator got nothing more than a slap on the wrist at best. I had heard another story about how a women didn’t even know she was being raped because she had no idea what sex even was. It wasn’t until the rape resulted in a pregnancy that she was told she had been abused.

This had me thinking about sexuality in sexually repressed or closed cultures. If people where able to talk about sex freely, educated about it at school or just plain didn’t feel guiltily about it, would there be just as much instances of rape and incest? What could happen in we educated women in sex and sexual health and what is abuse and what is consent? Would that change anything about how rape is handled or viewed in Sri Lankan culture?

So i’m conflicted. Thoughts?

-Daniella

During the Spring C21S course, I developed a proposal that aimed at examining the status of single mothers in Morocco, how their lifestyle is impacted by the Islamic state and what resources are available to them. I successfully conducted a lot of research, gathering numerous sources and reading a solid amount of literature. Upon arriving in Morocco, I had resources and contacts at my fingertips and was appreciative of the efforts made by Lotfi to provide me with the information I needed. I was able to collect business cards, talk to individuals whom are directly involved with single mother communities in Morocco and learn more about women and the role they play in Islam. However, after the conclusion of my stay in Morocco, I found myself stuck. I realized that I had numerous contacts and options as far as taking my research to the next level, but I was having a hard time focusing my topic and pinpointing its relevance. I placed my pursuit of this topic on hold while I traveled to Turkey and Sri Lanka with an open mind.

Once on my internship in Sri Lanka, I had the amazing opportunity through Sarvodaya to volunteer in a village right outside of Nuwara Eliya. I was placed in the home of one of the staff members of the Sarvodaya district center in “Little England.” My primary assignment was to teach English at the village school. While this had no correlation with my interests I shared with Bandula, I realized I could take advantage of the opportunity and possibly pursue another research topic.

Before I left for my 17 day homestay, I began to talk to different Sarvodaya staff members in Moratuwa about possible health issues I could look into. I happened to be in the right place at the right time and talked to a gentleman who was able to refer me to a nutrition graduate student whom also worked at headquarters. I was led to her office and sat down to talk to her, finding out prominent nutrition concerns in Sri Lanka. Geethmi shared with me the common practice of pregnant and lactating women believing certain myths regarding their diet. This immediately caught my attention, and I became interested in researching specific nutritional myths and beliefs of these Sri Lankan women. I decided to research what the specific myths/practices are, and how they impact the nutritional status of the baby and mother. Two days before my departure, I composed a questionnaire to be given to pregnant and/or lactating mothers, and Geethmi offered to revise and translate the document for me. With her great assistance and my ability to make 30 copies of the survey, I was ready to pursue a new research topic while in the village.

I had the opportunity to go into Nuwara Eliya town to a municipal clinic serving malnourished children and their families. Deepthi, my host sister who is the staff member at Sarvodaya, helped me administer my questionnaires to 30 women! Most of them were lactating women and were very willing to sit down and answer the 3 page survey I had. I am very pleased with my ability to have conducted this research among a specific population and obtain data concerning one case study. While there were limitations I faced while conducting the research, such as the language barrier, the lack of one on one interaction, and the inability to ask additional questions or write down the entire answer (all of which I will include in my paper), I am confident in my results. I have started to compile all of the data in an excel spreadsheet and have already come across answers Deepthi recorded that I have questions about. I am able to communicate with Deepthi over Facebook messenger and ask her specifics, so this should be a great help. I unfortunately realized that some of the data is incomplete. However, the last section of the questionnaire, which consists of a “Micronutrient Quiz,” provides me complete answers and data that is invaluable and should propel my main focus.

To say the least, my travel and internship experience shifted my research to an entirely new topic. However, I am confident in being able to successfully work on and pursue this topic throughout the semester and am encouraged by my background and major in HNFE. This not only greatly helps my pursuit of this new topic, but grants me the resources I need on this campus. I have already met with Mrs. Nicolin Girmes-Grieco, the professor for the Nutrition Across the Lifespan course I took freshman year, and have discussed my research details. She is willing to help in anyway and provide knowledge or additional resources I may need. While I do have a lot of background knowledge and personal connections relating to this topic, there is no doubt I need to conduct new research to adequately develop my altered project topic. I need to take many trips to library where I will find numerous amounts of literature regarding the required nutrition for pregnant and lactating women, nutrition in other countries and basic nutritive facts. I am looking forward to continuing to work on my paper, day by day, and compile all of the information I need to make this project a success. I know I have resources that are willing to assist me in the process, such as Shelby, Dr. Siegle, Mrs. Girmes-Grieco and even my “minority participation in research” program director–Dr. Jody Thompson. It will be a feat, but a rewarding and learning achievement.

More

My research focuses on poverty and homelessness, which as it turns out is a very broad topic.  I decided to compare the issue of poverty in the United States and in Sri Lanka to see how it plays out differently in two very different countries, one being a developed country (USA) and one classified as being in the Global South (Sri Lanka).

At the beginning of my research, I intended on comparing how these two countries approach the issues of poverty and homelessness.  Specific areas I would research included the rates of poverty/homelessness, major causes, social attitude towards those living with these issues, relief programs, what has worked to alleviate the issues, and what hasn’t worked.

The further I got into my research, I realized that I needed to narrow my focus a bit, as there are many, many causes of poverty, each with resulting sub-issues and programs.  An example would be job loss, drug or alcohol addiction, poor economies, and a lack of education.  Each of these subjects has their own causes and resulting consequences, making the scope of my research to broad and not well-defined.

After hearing Dr. Powell speak to the class about her work with displacement and studying displaced peoples, I decided that a good unifying topic between both the United States and Sri Lanka is the history of displacement events within both countries, with a major one being natural disasters.  I then decided to focus my research on how natural disasters affects poverty within these two countries.  Even that proved to be too broad of a topic and I have since decided to focus only on natural disasters and their relation to homelessness, rather than poverty in general.

Before traveling, and during our time abroad, I have concluded that I will narrow my research to study the differences between how natural disasters affect homelessness using Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the 2004 Asian Tsunami for Sri Lanka.  Upon doing some research, I have already realized that the tsunami was a much larger disaster than Hurricane Katrina, resulting in a much wider range of areas affected, and larger rates of death, damage, economic expense, and homelessness.  This is something that I will take into account when compiling my research, as it is important to note that programs and relief efforts will differ based on the scope and level of disaster that occurred.

I originally wanted to portray my research through a creative context such as a photojournal.  Even at the time of my original proposal, I knew that a photojournal would be a difficult medium to display this type of research.  I am going to consider new options, but would still like to use a less conventional method of presenting.

I am still fairly confident as to where I am going with my research. I am going to follow my original plan of researching how skateboarding can help build communities from the ground up in Sri Lanka as well as other places, but this time I am going to focus a little more on the Skateistan NGO model. Skateistan is an NGO in Afghanistan and now in Cambodia that was founded by an American skateboarder who saw the situations in these places and wanted to help. What he wanted to focus on was getting kids involved in something active that would bring them together in a safe environment, and from there, other NGOs and people working for aid, education and healthcare can come to that safe place to enroll kids in school and provide them with life benefits such as healthcare. That safe place he created was an indoor skate park.

Skateboarding gives kids an outlet, and since it is not a team sport, it gives kids as much flexibility with it as they desire. They can skate as much or as little as they want and make friends along the way. While in Sri Lanka I was very conflicted as to whether I wanted to continue on with my skateboarding research, because after traveling the country, I thought that it wasn’t quite ready for skateboarding and that it would really take decades for it to become recognized there. I thought ok so what if a kid gets a skateboard but lives on a busy street with blind turns, beccause they are everywhere in Sri Lanka, and he goes to skateboard in the street and gets hit by a car. There just aren’t enough safe places for kids to ride skateboards there. Even in Colombo there was hardly anywhere to put my board down. But everything has to start somewhere, and skateboarding does to. That is where PUSH skateboards comes in. They are fostering a growing skateboarding scene in Colombo and are already in the works of having a skate park built in a safe location in a more business like district in the city. The kids who will be going to the park first are the PUSH family of skateboarders, and once they basically found the park as a designated skate spot, they will always be there and will be able to further foster a skateboarding community.

So really the key for skateboarding in ‘developing countries’ is to have a skate park. Though skateboarding’s beginnings happened in the streets elsewhere, I think that for it just to be transplanted to any country, it needs to be done by way of a park. It legitimizes the whole idea and will give kids a real place to go, not just side streets and sidewalks where they could get kidnapped or exposed to various other dangers. I think that in some cases, there not only needs to be a skate park, but there should be be an organization like Skateistan that is there to make sure it is happening in a healthy way; to teach kids how to skate and to enroll them in schools. This kind of introduction of skateboarding is not the same as the nitty gritty go shred the streets kind of skating, because the focus areas of projects like Skateistan are very different in many ways from western areas. There are different dangers to consider, and different hoops to jump through to make humanitarian projects work once a park is established.

Next, I am going to look at the new Skateistan center in Cambodia and try to really learn the workings of the organization and how other organizations interact with it, including what their goals are and what projects they are creating. Then I will be able to use their model to look elsewhere. I am also still in contact with PUSH and they are going to be sending me all of their plans and legal documents that have gotten them where they are. I am mainly going to be looking at how they worked with local government to receive clearance to build a skate park in the city.

Thanks for reading,

Eli