So I question a practice and then I question the whole curriculum, and then I become utterly frustrated with Headquarters and our USAID grant. For me, and I’m pretty sure for our CEO and visionary of GRS, Tommy Clark, this is about the children that we work with and protecting them from this destructive disease also known as AIDS. So why is it that I feel like decisions are motivated by money and by numbers?
I’m pretty sure because that is just how it works. Money makes the world go around and in the non-profit world, grants and funding are the only way we can make it. Now in order for us to have and keep and potentially get more money from USAID, we have to reach certain targets of learners graduated from our programs and people in our communities tested. While it is slightly infuriating because it leads even the most compassionate people to make decisions based around only graduates, I understand that sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
It wasn’t too long ago that I told you the story about Practice 6 and our problems with the school Greenpoint. There were so many problems in fact that we were just going to work through two more practices to get to Practice 6 and be done. This is the perfect example of a time where we were motivated and influenced solely by the fact that we needed numbers. All of a sudden these kids with faces and names and horribly distressing home life situations, are typed into a computer and become nothing more than a number and a statistic to be submitted to USAID. Here we are on the ground, working with these kids for 9 days of their lives, teaching them about a very difficult disease and in the end they become nothing more than a number.
Luckily after a little fight, we did end of getting to work with the kids for 3 more practice, complete the curriculum, and have a graduation for them, but I am pretty sure that is where it ended. Stories of girls being raped, children being left alone at 12 to take care of younger sibling when their parents died, and we didn’t even have a system or path in place to lead these kids to the help they very severely need.
Phew, I think we are all in desperate need to vacation right now to recharge, refuel, and renew. I realize that many of these blogs, thought I would like to be slightly quirky and goofy with them, have been more on the serious side of things. But I feel like it is important that I share as I learn and explain some of the questions that pop up as I move along. I am sharing more my thought processes around issues as opposed to my day-to-day happening because a lot of my days are very similar. Sometimes we get busier and other days I have plenty of time to chill out, but either way I seriously doubt me telling you about all the receipts I reconciled or the number of shirts in our inventory I counted would be of any more interest than what I am discussing now.
No comments:
Post a Comment