This week a CleanBirth.org gained a highly-motivated high school intern. Thanks Marla! I know that your passion and energy will make a difference.
Before bringing Marla on-board, I researched projects motivating youth from the US to support youth in the developing world. I love the UN’s Girl Up campaign, which shows in an engaging, accessible way how (and why) girls can help their peers around the world. Marla said that she could “relate to” the Girl Up video on utube. That’s a big accomplishment — crossing the divide between US teens and girls in Africa. Making kids feel connected to other people’s suffering in a way that empowers, not alienates.
An article by Scott Seider at Boston University “Social Justice in the Suburbs: Engaging Privileged Youth in Social Action” talks about the need to educate students about these issues in the right way. In his study of “83 high school students from an affluent Boston suburb” taking a course on social justice, he found that kids can feel overwhelmed by the hugeness of poverty, protective of their own wealth, and alienated from both the poor and those working to fight poverty. Too much negative information can cause them to stop listening. What’s need is smaller a dose information and bigger one of hope.
As an adult, the issues surrounding poverty seem too huge. That is why I cose clean birth kits: they are tangible and specific; they aim to stamp out a particular problem. I’m not taking on global maternal health, instead I’m focused on birth-related infections in 50 villages in Southern Laos. Because I can do that.
Marla and I will bear these lessons in mind as we reach out to her peers. She has shared that smaller group settings are more conducive to question-asking and getting people interested. So we’ll do that. We will keep the focus positive and show the kids that, though poverty is overwhelming, there are things we can do.
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