Queen's University International Centre Blog
Project Update!
So this is the plan for the next few weeks: The 2 other community centre interns and myself will produce a report based on the findings of surveys that were distributed last month to 200 women who regularly use the centre. We hope that these findings will point to useful areas that can be covered in workshops (to be held at the centre, ideally attended by the same women who filled out the surveys). Past experience and conversations tell us that the peer education model (of the style where one migrant worker leads a workshop for her peers) will not be well received as a primary model to be implemented in response to our findings.** However, much of the literature we’ve found tells us that peer education,especially when it comes to topics of this level of stigma and taboo, is way more successful at imparting useful information that leads to real behaviour change.
In the past workshops have been organized by a team of about 5 migrant women leaders in close partnership with the community centre. Generally these workshops have been led entirely by professionals (eg: MDs). If it seems from our findings that it is appropriate, our plan is to continue with this professional-led style of workshops, but to also include a part 2 to the workshops. This second part will be led entirely by the women leaders (women who have self-selected to speak out about these topics and I think are very aware of the impact, both positive and negative, that this may have on their standing in the community). This is the exciting part! It’s one thing to have an MD tell you that the most effective method of birth control while simultaneously preventing against STIs is condom use. It’s another to have this knowledge followed up with a session led by your neighbour/ cousin/ the lady who sells you your produce once a week who can have a frank conversation with you about negotiation strategies, how to introduce a new method of birth control into your relationship with your husband, etc, and to de-bunk some of the common myths surrounding birth control use.
We’d like to find a secondary community with similar demographics to our primary community, and document a round of workshops in which professionals are the only source of information. Our hope is that the results from this comparison will show our centre that peer education, perhaps in conjunction with professional-led workshops, really works. (This secondary community would then have a follow-up round of workshops with peer educators similar to those received by the primary community).
We’ll see, but I’m excited!!
OH, and since I read somewhere that no blog post is complete without an interesting picture or link, here’s a link to a photo essay that I found recently. It’s by a British photographer called Adrian Fisk and was featured on a website I visit very regularly for alternative news.
http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/adrian-fisk-what-are-young-chinese-thinking-about.html
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It’s high time that I tell you about the work that has kept me away from blogging for the last weeks. TA responsibilities have kept me particularly busy these past 10 days. Part of my job this term is to pick up all 15 Queen’s exchange students, register them in their Foreign Students Dormitory and orient them to the best of my abilities. Cell phone purchase, Internet set up, geographic orientation and explanations of course structure and expectations for this term were all part of that. All international flights to Shanghai land at Pudong Airport, a good 60-75 minutes away from the centre of the city. Most of the students arrived on separate flights, which, although terrible from a “I’ve been to this airport more times in a week than most people will go in a lifetime”, allowed me to chat with many individually, and I think helped me provide much more tailored and concrete answers to their pressing questions.
The view from the Fudan Foreign Students Dorm - Photo by Erika
The great news is that the students seem to be exceptionally independent and self-sufficient, and most of the time I feel either that I am being too mothering or providing them with redundant information. Each Queen’s student gets paired with a Fudan student with whom they do their internship; the 30 of them also attend class together. The Fudan students are well matched to the Queen’s students and seem equally lively and outgoing. I’m exciting to step up my game and plan activities that match their spirit and initiative. I’m thinking maybe a day-long Amazing Race in Shanghai….
On the fellowship side of things, I’ve now had a couple meetings at my community centre, which is located in an area of Pudong that couldn’t be less similar to my neighbourhood in JingAn. The community centre, built less than 2 years ago through a private donation, is located in a community of migrant workers. Most of the community has lived in the area for 4 or 5 years, and I think is less mobile than many migrant workers that come and go in Shanghai. The centre has a games room, a small library, a classroom, a meeting room, as well as a basketball court and some playground games for kids. J, my main contact at the centre, tells me that at first it was quite a challenge to get community members through the gates. In an effort to integrate into the community fabric, the centre has opened itself up as a hang-out spot for mothers and older women who aren’t at work. Every time I’ve been in there so far, there are at least a dozen breastfeeding or pregnant women with a couple grandmothers and streams of young ones chatting, playing and just hanging out.
The centre also holds regular celebrations and events, to which the larger community is always invited. This weekend, I’m heading down to photograph the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations and meet more community members. Although I don’t speak much Mandarin and no other dialects (many of these workers communicate in a dialect that is difficult to understand for a Beijing-Mandarin speaker), I still think it’s important to interact with community members as much as possible. My hope is to become a familiar face. That way, when I start asking intimate questions about reproductive health and sexuality, hopefully I’ll have some social capital to fall back on.
Despite a bit of a mis-communication at the beginning involving a survey (that I spent a lot of time perfecting; turns out the centre already had a very similar one that they had 200 women fill out last month), the good news is that the centre and I have exactly the same focus when it comes to reproductive health (this means my research was on point!). The next few weeks are going to be filled with analysis of the results of the surveys, in order to figure out whether or not further surveys are required (my gut tells me yes, but we’ll see), and to start to figure out what kind of workshop would be appropriate for the women who completed the surveys.
One of the big obstacles that I think we’re going to face is the unwillingness among many women to participate in open and frank discussions about abortion, STIs, condoms in a group setting. J (main contact at the centre) tells me that while the women are willing to complete a survey and really want to learn more about these subjects, they are often worried that attending a group workshop about such topics stigmatizes them or implies that they are HIV positive or having pre-marital sex or engaging in some other not socially acceptable behaviour.
However, J also tells me that there are many women who come to the centre who are willing to take information they learn at the centre and teach it to others outside the centre walls: in other words, these women act as peer educators. Peer Education was THE pivotal concept of my project proposal, so this news is very very exciting. It makes sense: who better to learn from than someone who is from your community and lives the same circumstances that you do?
My original thought was to have peer educators come from the university community that I have tapped into at Fudan, and I still hope to incorporate that idea into the project. However now I’m thinking it might be better to work with peer educators directly from the migrant community first, and incorporate university students as a secondary phase of the project. This is a new idea, which I will tell you more about as I have further discussions with J and others at the centre.
In other good news, J put me in touch with 2 key players that will make this project actually possible. The first, R, is a student from the USA who speaks decent Mandarin and is also working with the centre for the next year or so. R has agreed to work with me on my project, thereby providing me with a translator (at least for basic conversations), but also providing me with a knowledgeable partner with whom I can discuss new ideas. I’m always better when I can bounce ideas off of someone else. Although J is obviously an amazing resource, it’s nice to have someone to talk to who comes from my cultural perspective (but with great instincts about Chinese culture that come from her Taiwanese background). The second person is a Fudan student who administered the original surveys as part of her public health degree. She will also be working with the centre for the next while. It seems therefore that we now have a team of 3 + J, all interested in the same topic and eager to start setting up workshops at the centre.
I couldn’t have asked for a better set-up for the project!
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