Speaking up for the next generation.
All mothers—regardless of their educational level or economic class—have a voice, and the ability to make change in their communities, their nations, and the world.
This MAU Vocal Empowerment Workshop was hosted by an NGO in the US (Starfish One by One) for a mother’s group in this small city. All of the women were very poor and their lives tended to meet similar difficulties. Though illiterate themselves, this group of women clearly understood that the only chance out of poverty for their children was to continue their schooling to become a “professional” (a term I heard used over and over again in Guatemala to describe the haloed status of someone who had made their way out of poverty.) The problem was that they themselves were incapable of helping their children with their studies and the schools were woefully inadequate. They expressed their extreme gratitude for foreign NGO workers, such as ourselves, for helping them since their own government was corrupt and did nothing for the poor. I felt the need to rather delicately dance around this belief that help for them would only come from outside their own lives, and encouraged them to take an active role in shaping their reality.
Since their condemnation of their own government was so complete, I acknowledged their beliefs while at the same time proposing we try and make their governments accountable to their needs anyway. So we set up a scene with some of the mothers from this workshop going to visit a local government official to ask for a better school. The woman portraying this official, our host who was a “professional” herself, was humorously officious and arrogant. After the mothers voiced their demands, she instructed them to create a petition and gather signatures for this initiative. Next we acted out going from one woman to the next asking for signatures. This required them to explain their cause to each mother and point out benefits for the entire community, even to those who would not directly benefit from it.
Once that was completed, we acted out handing the petition into the government official. Here a shift occurred. Instead of me prompting the action, the women themselves coached each other in demanding some kind of response from the government official as to what kind of action would be taken in response to these demands. A palpable shift had occurred. These mothers recognized that they have the potential to transform a government plagued by corruption to one responsive to the needs of its children.
