Our team read this article about poverty and sexuality education earlier this month. Take a look and see what you have to say about it. A couple of our team’s email responses are also included below for your perusal. Enjoy!
—–Original Message—–
From: Ryan Russell
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 8:33 AM
Subject: Re: what do we think about this?
Hey team,
I disagree wholeheartedly with the article. Poverty has proven to be a very complex and seemingly difficult thing to predict and overcome. There are many things that contribute to someone staying in poverty, and just one of these is sex education in impoverished communities. It can be said there are several reasons for this 1) sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV can become an epidemic that wipes out whole communities who are poor 2) poor people who have a shortage of land cannot sustain the numbers of children they often have, and 3) often girls who have children young are poor and thus aren’t able to take advantages of opportunities like education that can lift them out of poverty. When dealing with poverty you much look at the issues connected to what’s keeping in poverty or what’s adding another burden on them. Poverty then is not just a money issue. Poverty can be broken down to a day to day decision issue and can often mean the breaking of generational and social norms to be lifted out of it.
Ryan
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Helen Kingery wrote:
Oi. This article makes some strong statements, but I believe a good one to read for discussion sake. I agree with what Ryan wrote, that poverty is a complex issue. And as with many complex issues, I think that the answer is *usually* yes. Should people be working on infrastructure? Yes. Should people be striving to meet basic needs? Yes. Should people be teaching about growing food and instilling a sense of hope and empowerment? Yes. Should people be initiating workshops on locally relevant topics? Yes.
Poverty reduction is not really an either-or/this-or-that type of deal. To produce good fruit, it has to involve grass roots and governments, individuals and families, private and public. To be clearer about this–what good is a new school if everyone drops out before high school for personal reasons? What good is having plenty of food and shelter if everyone dies before they’re 40 from preventable diseases? Every piece matters. I think about the book “When Helping Hurts” in the sense of living in a broken system, and there are just so many areas of poverty that all need to be healed and transformed by Christ.
As for whether this peer-led sex ed workshop really is a stretch to be included in poverty reduction–no. My assumption in this particular example is that the young woman leading these workshops is either Haitian or has lived there long enough to accurately identify sexuality as closely linked with poverty in these youth. I trust that. I believe she has identified a poverty of self and a poverty of community and she is able to address some of that in talking through sexuality. My guess is that the workshops include things like decision making skills, sense of identity and worth, healthy and appropriate relationships, identifying diseases and seeking treatment, planning toward future opportunities… Even if they only talk through a few of these things, I imagine the lives of youth could be dramatically impacted in economic and emotional burden of sexual consequences, lower unintended pregnancies, lower absenteeism in school… things that ultimately have the potential to reduce *economic, physical* poverty.
I also really appreciate that it is a peer-led activity. No outsiders are called on to save these young people from anything. There is plenty of knowledge, wisdom, experience to draw on from within the community. Imagine how empowering that is. Not only that, but it doesn’t “hurt” anyone—again referring back to some of the ideas from “When Helping Hurts.”
I’m sure my own bias comes through, that sexuality is one of the most essential topics to learn about and grow in… that a lot of our personhood and life in general is affected by our sexuality, probably more than we’d like to admit. At the same time, I wouldn’t advocate its inclusion in every poverty reduction effort. That would be foolish. I do believe this is a delicate matter that would depend on the local situation and whether it would be appropriate and effective.
Cheers,
helen
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