Response to Goal #3 Presentation
Alyssa and Heidi focused on Goal #3 Promote Gender Equality and Women Empowerment and how it applied to the Central African Republic. I thought it was interesting how they mentioned the national anthem (I think that’s what it was) and how it mentioned numerous times the words “dignity” and “unity” and yet there was so much gender inequality throughout the country. This shows that the country is probably very unaware of their problem, and if they become aware, will probably be very willing to implement suggested proposals to help.
They then went to the source of the issue, which they felt was a lack of education for women. I really liked this approach (maybe because it is so similar to what we did and it seemed to work well) because it is practically impossible to try to work on every possible solution to the problem. It is way more efficient to focus on the core issues, as the other ones should then fall into place, or at least be made easier. You have to start somewhere, so it makes sense to start at the source of the problem.
They then mentioned the huge amount of projects right now that are being implemented in the Central African Republic, yet only a few (3) were working with women in the Central African Republic. (I must have forgotten to write this down or maybe they didn’t talk much about it, but I feel like they could have gone into more detail about these three organizations, or looked at what other countries have been doing, so we could see where their project proposal stemmed from. That’s pretty much the only thing I would have changed though. The rest of it was great!)
Then they moved into their proposal: Project UNITY! I love how they gave it a name, although it became a little confusing at times as to whether this was a proposal or a precedent. What I liked about their proposal was how in depth it was. Unlike most of the other presentations which covered at a surface level possibilities for a proposal, they went down to every last detail of how many books were being used and how many huts were being turned into schools during the day, and for how long they were going to have school. (And I didn’t quite catch where they got these numbers from. Maybe they came from a former project… But if this wasn’t explained, that could be a possible addition to the presentation. Sorry, I must have spaced out.) I thought it was a good idea to get the mothers involved as schoolteachers and have the current teachers be in charge of training them. Not only does it work towards the school’s benefit (as they don’t have to pay for more teachers) but it also works towards the mothers’ benefit (as they are getting a better education for their children and getting and education themselves). It also breaks up the schools and their books more efficiently, so there are less children to a book. I liked the various images and graphics in their presentation (and how they no longer used clip art but rather digital images of a hut). This really helped me to understand how their proposal was being implemented and the various details of the proposal.
Overall, I though they did a splendid job at looking into the problem at hand and seeing how Goal 3 could best be achieved in Central African Republic. Good job!