Girls just want to have fun

It's been a whirlwind kind of week. First I throw myself a grand birthday party, which was fun and all, but ate a significant portion of my living allowance. I also did an interview with NPR about how I'm a huge nerd and I spend my downtime swinging in a hammock eating mangos and listening to podcasts. Then I FINALLY got approved to start my capstone research i.e. I got the kick in the butt I needed to hunker down and get this master's degree in the bag. I took it upon myself to start a housing project, because let's face it, I just want to build Otinia a new house. And to top it all off I got my $2,354 grant approved to buy art supplies and teach gender equality workshops. I'm so happy we get to expand the class but I'm also freaking out over how exactly to present the issue of sexism to a room of children.

It's all so very Peace Corps that you spend months on end just mulling about your room then BAM! Here's a million projects and a big important deadline. Just like that!

I had a little interruption when Clemencia sneak attack recruited me to invite women to yet another taller. Now, I've already walked the entire community, solita, inviting women to a sewing taller that never happened. I did not want to do that again, especially with all the new projects on my plate. But things turned desperate when she told me that they've actually already been approved to host the taller and that it starts in, oh, 3 days. She just needed women to commit to the 6 hours/day, 5 days/week program, and she thought I would be just the person to do it with her.

And so I went. I think the fact that we already had 21 sewing machines coming made it easier for me to sell to the women on the long workday away from the home.

Something interesting happened on the first day of the taller last Wednesday. I was impressed that the majority of the women kept their word and showed up to the taller. The instructor is a sweet older woman named Conchi, and I decided immediately that I liked her tough love approach to the time commitment. I was really caught off guard, however, when a woman was barred from participating in the sewing class. Why? Because she'd learned too much already.

INSAFORP, the NGO that gives the taller, has a rule that you can't participate in the same taller twice and you can't go to more than 2 or 3 overall. The idea being that these talleres are designed to provide specialized training to women, thus creating incoming generating activities in the community. If you don't start a business after the taller, you must be lazy or not willing to commit. Therefore, stop draining our resources and be gone!

But who, WHO I ask you, teaches the women how to start a business? How to keep track of costs and gains? Who teaches them about marketing or customer service? Whooooo?!

Not to mention that in order to learn something new, like sewing or cosmetology, you have to organize at least 20 women to make it worthwhile for an NGO to teach you. And so what they're suggesting is to flood the market with 20 women who can sew clothes or 20 women who can paint nails. Even if a woman does beat the odds and starts a business, she's got 19 other competitors living right next door!

So who then is supposed to be teaching business development in rural El Salvador? Answer: Peace Corps Volunteers. More specifically, COED Volunteers. But obviously we do not number great enough to reach every woman who has ever participated in a taller ever. (Fact check: there are 14 COED PCVs currently serving in El Salvador, but ~14 more will swear-in at the end of the month.) That's just foolish.

I do get frustrated as a PCV when I find out that there has already been sewing, cooking, bread making, cosmetology and school uniform making workshops that have cycled through my community, sometimes more than twice. Everything has been done! But there are no women who continued with what they learned to start a business. I have an opportunity here to teach entrepreneurship, but something else crops up in the back of my mind.

We don't have community colleges, summer camps, park districts or senior centers here in El Salvador. If you want to learn something you have to organize those 20 women and beg an NGO to come to you. And since many women stop going to school around the 7th grade, these workshops might be the only chance they get to try something new. In the US, it's so easy to sign up for a class. My grandma does Tai-Chi and chair yoga, and I think it's wonderful! It's the land of opportunity!

What's so wrong with wanting to learn something? Shouldn't we encourage these women to open their minds and challenge themselves? How dare you say this woman has "learned too much?" Has it literally become a bad thing to participate too much? I see both sides of the story, but sheesh. Even in the campo girls just want to have fun.

First day! Glad they showed up!

The sewing machines all ready to go. 

My eldest host sister, Mina. I filled out her application because she cannot read or write. They needed to put all their identifying info on the app. Mina thinks I'm camera happy.