For the last few weeks, I’ve been in Valparaiso, Chile, working with students at the Escuela Uruguay, a primary school for “at-risk” girls. At the school, I along me with my fellow St. Edward’s students hang out for a few hours with a handful of Chilean girls, an iPad, and a list of English vocabulary words, struggling to teach the girls a few key phrases in English, as well as how to use iPads and apps to study and create media to express themselves. We speak to each other in “Spanglish” and giggle and spend probably too much time playing Frutaba, a vocab-building app game.
If our work doesn’t sound like much, that’s because it’s not–and it’s not supposed to be. Though I do hope that my time with the girls at the Escuela Uruguay will push towards empowerment and a better education, I know that ultimately, empowerment is a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface. The girls at Escuela Uruguay’s lives are vastly different than mine–they live in huge collectivist families, and dream of one day starting a new one of their own, while I am miles away from mine, traveling and pursuing my individualistic dreams. But we are all human, and can all, therefore, connect and provide each other with something that will help each other out along the way.
If I can provide the girls at Escuela Uruguay with a skill or technological tool that they can later use to achieve their goals and better their lives, then my time there will have been a success. I took this philosophy from BRAC, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) I learned about in a university class: global issues with an emphasis on women’s empowerment with Dr. Cotter. I was a freshman, and probably would have stated my career goal as “to save the world.” In class we discussed social problems that women face, as well as possible solutions or progressive directions.
More often than not, the solution I came up with was empowerment. “Empower the women to find jobs,” or “empower women to protect themselves”–as if “empowerment” was an end in itself. When I contemplated how to empower someone, though, I would hit a wall. If empowerment meant being independent, self-reliant, and liberated, then it’s impossible to do it for someone else. If it meant doing those things for oneself, then they’re already empowered, and so empowerment is no longer an issue. Empowerment became a paradox in my mind, until I learned about BRAC.
BRAC started out as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Committee, with the goal of empowering impoverished people with little to no means of advancement with micro-credits–or the bare necessities they need to start their own companies, get on their own two feet, pay back the credit, and continue as a fully functional, self-sufficient business. Now, BRAC is a multinational sensation, seen as the world leader in empowerment.
While BRAC’s example gives me hope and inspires me, the organization has not by any means eradicated women’s issues from the world, nor can it singlehandedly do so. It has, on the other hand, provided a framework that I can follow on a smaller scale in my own life, and thereby do my part to further their work and spread empowerment. And that’s where my work at the Escuela Uruguay comes in.
If I’m lucky, I might provide a few girls with a tool they need to do a few things they might otherwise not have been able to. I see it as a mini-micro-credit. If my experience Escuela Uruguay and learning about BRAC has taught me anything, it is that that’s what empowerment means–whether someone ends up with a goat farm or a sewing business or learning another language or skill.