Cultural sensitivity.
It's the dream. The gold standard of aid work that gets us global pov-sters weak in the knees. Recently, I feel like I've been talking about this idea a lot, not just in GPP 105 and 115, but also my public health classes and organizations. I wholeheartedly appreciate the idea and laud its aims. Studies have shown that culturally sensitive methods lead to increased acceptance and retention of education and interventions. And I admit, I am undoubtedly, completely convinced that being culturally sensitive fosters an attitude of respect and humility which encourages cooperation and participation.
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was drawn to India Smiles for several reasons, one of the most important being that the project partnered with NGOs in Mumbai and is dependent on community health workers that were residents of the community they were serving. One of my main tasks this semester is to develop an education station. To do so, we have heavily relied on information gathered from this summer's focus groups with mothers and community health workers. Trying to figure out what nutrition information to reinforce and which aspects of oral hygiene to focus on. For being Berkeley based project partnered with NGOs around the globe (Referring to the network of oral health projects that my PI has implemented), I feel like we do a pretty good job at being culturally sensitive. Despite having a core model and structure, every project tries to adapt as much to the individual country and before every trip, we reinforce that student volunteers must go in without any assumptions or pre-conceived notions. As the project is continued throughout the years, the team relies on information gathered from the community and NGO and community health worker feedback.
One day after our discussion about culturally sensitive methods, however, I was struck by an odd feeling, followed up by an even more unsettling question: Isn't the very implementation of an intervention a culturally insensitive move? The idea of an intervention implies that there is something to be fixed or adjusted in the community in question, and this is something that even the most neutrally phrased questionnaire and culturally specific survey can't change.
I know this speaks and alludes to the bigger questions surrounding aid work in general, of who should carry out these aid projects and whether we are a piece in this puzzle. But I must put out the disclaimer that even though I feel the neuropathy in my fingers, I am in no way at the paralysis of cynicism. This is just something that I've been mulling over the past few weeks and wanted to open up for discussion.
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ReplyDeleteYou have an interesting point about the nature of cultural sensitivity. However, I would also like to propose that due to the tangled, interwoven mess of cultural relations brought about by globalism and its predecessors, imperialism and colonization, it is impossible to not have some kind of affect or presence in the day-to-day lives of people in other nations. Through our consumption and even just existing in the United States, we are having visible and invisible effects on people half a world away. Some poverty alleviation efforts are extremely culturally insensitive, but there are others that recognize the detrimental effects of outside forces in impoverished communities and seek to counteract them. They see that the problem is not with people's cultures, but with those who seek to repress and destroy them.
ReplyDeleteI guess the big question is whether the people themselves are calling aid and assistance intervention into question. More exactly, are these people being asked if they want assistance. I know states accept to these aid charities and development interventions, but the fact is, no one really asks the people in the first place, whether they want to become part of this aid cycle. After taking a decal about Haiti, learning that the small country is invaded by NGOs and UN peacekeepers claiming to be trying to assist the government and assist the people to rebuild their livelihoods. But when researchers asked the Haitian if they wanted the help from foreign actors, they responded negatively, pointing to them as the causes of their problems. And even though many NGOs do accomplish more that the government itself, the people still do not want to depend on aid, the want to become self-sustainable. They reject dependency. That is why we have to ask the people, and not come into a place assuming that because they are poor, politically, socially and economically vulnerable, that they seek aid from others.
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