Change Makers, Gender Issues, and No Time to Breathe

In typical fashion for me, I have managed to go from having very little to do here (talking primarily of my internship) to nearly overloading myself with commitments and not taking a full day off from some sort of work in the last three weeks. Granted, I am still only working a bit over 40 hours a week (in office at least), but there has not been a full day off in quite a while now, which starts to take it's toll on you. Part of the problem is that the work week at my organization and at the camp I am helping with are a day off from each other. So after working Sunday - Thursday at the camps, I frequently have to come in to observe or help with some sort of training on Saturday (when Ruwwad does a large part of their community projects because people are off work and out of school).

However, a big reason for my never ending work week is that I continue to make life hard for myself by coming up with new ideas (which are a very dangerous thing). I talked a bit in my last post about how the organization I am working with has asked me to observe everything and give them advice on how to improve some of their programs. With my couple classes in social entrepreneurship, I have begun to see wasted opportunities and resources in organizations more clearly, and really get a kick out of figuring out how to put those inputs together to make useful outcomes.

On Wednesday, I presented a few of my ideas on how to utilize the wasted time of some volunteers and the need for critical thinking development (and not just sports skills) for the students. I was somewhat surprised to be given the go ahead to implement a new program within the summer day camps starting this upcoming week. The program I created, Change Makers, focuses on cultivating the critical thinking and problem solving skills in kids to help identify and propose solutions to problems that they see in the world around them. In general, the focus is less on solving everything than it is on thinking seriously about these issues and working together to address problems. I had Thursday and Friday to actually draft up the program (goals and methods and a lot of the daily plans), and this morning got to train about 10 volunteers to implement the program at all 4 camps that we are running. I'll try to post an update next week detailing how week one of the program goes (only 3 weeks left). It will be very interesting, especially trying to track progress and successful implementation from the Arabic group discussions.

Also, I have had a lot of very interesting interactions with the female volunteers this week after spending last Sunday in Salt (the only all girls camp). When the volunteers are all together, the boys and girls very quickly separate. Occasionally, a few of them will actually talk briefly to someone of the opposite sex (greetings and such are common of course), but it is very rare to see a boy and girl engaged in a longer conversation. At first, I thought the girls were just all very reserved and quite. However, on the bus to Salt, I learned that this initial impression was not true at all. As soon as we got on the road, the music turned on, and the back of the bus turned into a bit of a dance party/sing-along. They got very excited when I started clapping along for a bit. However, this was only possible because the only boys there were the bus driver and myself. Later in the week, I noticed that in a co-ed bus the girls were incredibly quite, and when I tried to get one of them into the music she said "only in Salt, not here."

Besides the bus ride, I was able to start talking to a number of the female volunteers (and a couple of the very talkative and curious students) for the first time last Sunday. The conversations were all in Arabic, most of the volunteers speak very little English, but we were able to communicate a decent bit. The interesting thing is that as a foreigner, it is more appropriate for me to talk to the girls than for most of the guys here. I'm not sure how much of this is me just not being required to be as sensitive to the cultural gender divisions (as a foreigner you have a bit more leeway, but don't try to go too far) and how much is the fact that many times the boys contribute to the division by segregating themselves from the girls and refusing to really talk to them.

It is interesting that Ruwwad has a fairly female led leadership and that men and women work constantly with each other in the office, but for many of the volunteers the division is still a bit deal. I'll keep sussing this out, no conclusions to be made, but many more questions starting to formulate. Wish me luck implementing my program this week. It's gonna be quite an experience!