Participatory research

The girl in the photo is Xochilt (one of the members of the Youth group) at the rally. This guy was spray painting tattoos of Ché and Sandino in red and black, the Sandinista colors.

I went to a very interesting discussion yesterday at the Casa Ben Linder (www.casabenlinder.org). Two representatives from an organization called Health Unlimited spoke about their work with indigenous women on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. This region of the country has it's own culture- more like the Caribbean islands. People speak a Creole mix of indigenous languages and English, and many are of African descent. One of their projects is to help indigenous women advocate for better and more culturally sensitive health care services. They conducted a participatory research project to help identify the issues that they found to be the most important to address. Some of these included lack of medications, lack of funds to travel to the doctor and insensitive treatment by medical staff. Participatory research for community development is such an exciting way of counteracting the top-down development models enacted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund who enact projects that often hurt communities more than they help. Although the process is long, each community member feels that their input is heard and also feels empowered to change the conditions in their own lives. It's a team approach, wth the help of NGO's, universities and other officials involved. I'm hoping to do some participatory research with the kids in the English class. I'll let you all know how it goes...