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Gloria the student, refreshes Tsatsu her instructor, on wheel
truing, at the TT, March 6-10, in Golokuati. |
March 2006--from TT to WW, Jaye's report
Training of Trainers to a Women’s Workshop
I met Jaye Marolla in August 2004 when I stopped in at the Community
Cycling Center in Portland Oregon looking for a critical mass of 400
bikes to fill a container and send to Ghana. I was in Portland visiting
my brother, who was there for a marimba convergence. Jaye was just
another person with an interest in volunteering in Ghana, but more than
a year later she followed up and I needed to find something for her to
do.
Ever since another volunteer, Emily Lin, started our Earn-a-Bike
program in three communities in 2003, there has been a certain
disconnect between the programs I’d started and Emily’s EAB. Jaye was
willing to bring all the players together and organize the first
Training of Trainers(TT), in Golokuati, a town of 2,000 near the
mountains, for the week of March 6-10. Here’s her report: (DP)
March 18, 2006
Wow the past ten days have probably been my busiest time since arriving
here in Ghana January 11. David and Kate (another volunteer) came up to
my place in Golokuati last Saturday to help with preparations for the
teacher training to begin on Monday. There was lots of organizing to be
done with the 20+ participants of lead instructors, assistants, students
and local mechanics coming in. Our hosts, the headmaster of the Ve-ICCES
vocational training school where the training was being held and
Mr.Tsatsu the lead EAB instructor at Golokuati were helpful, and our
link to figuring out lodging and food for our visitors.
The training lasted all week through Saturday and we split each day up
into two sessions from 8-11am and 1-4pm. The goals of the training
were:
1) to assess the skill level of the current instructors,
2) connect George and Samson (the two program leaders who run the
one-day and advanced VBP workshops) with the EAB program, and
3) for everyone to learn more skills, both instructors and students who
were new to the program.
Each participant received a bicycle, tools, or 250,000 cedis ($28) at
the closing of the program. Great motivating factor in case the new bike
knowledge was not enough!
We split up the Earn-A-Bike curriculum over the course of the week and
seven different instructors each got a chance to lead a lesson. While
new students learned these skills for the first time, the other
instructors sat in and watched their peers instruct. Throughout the
course of the week EAB instructors, George and Samson (who have lots of
experience working and teaching with bikes) and Dave and I were able to
come in and offer additional points to supplement the instructors’
lessons. Once the lecture part was over we would move into the practical
where the students (about half the 20 person class) would get some
hands-on work with the bikes, overhauling hubs, adjusting brakes or
learning how the gears work.
Overall I think the training went great, I really did not have much of
an idea what to expect. Nor did I know for sure what my role would be
throughout the training. I found myself organizing, directing,
listening, recording and really getting a sense for the various folks
who make up the Village Bicycle Project. David is really wonderful at
letting people take initiative and step up to creating a project or a
lesson in a way they see fit, offering guidance but really allowing that
person to lead. I deeply appreciate this kind of freedom because I
really felt I was able to push myself out of my comfort zone and test my
own skills of communication and people relations. I also have found this
type of energy contagious, when someone opens up a door of opportunity
for you to be empowered you want to do the same for others. This leads
to the other super positive and really exciting result of the TT.
The women!!! We have some absolutely kick ass female assistant
instructors. From Golokuati, we have three that Emily trained 2 years
ago when she was here, two that are currently in the EAB program but
will move into the assistant positions once the others graduate from
school, 2 from a neighboring village Koloenu, and one from Kopeyia
another one of the three sites were the EAB program is ongoing. The 3
assistants who have been working on bikes the longest are for sure the
most skilled, some more so than the male lead instructors as they
demonstrated during a wheel truing practical!
Alas, why is this so terribly exciting? Well beyond the fact that
offering women the opportunity to gain skills and knowledge about bikes
anywhere in the world is a pretty cool, liberating thing, let me give
you a little cultural context for women and bikes in Ghana. From my
experience the past 2 months I have seen the most women on bikes in
Golokuati (a reason for this certainly could be the many workshops and
EAB classes the VBP has hosted there) I haven’t seen hardly any women on
bikes in Accra, a few in various villages along the coast and during
other travels. In the village I visited for the one-day workshop a Peace
Corps volunteer was telling me most of the girls aren’t even allowed to
do their own repairs on bikes. Often the boys will not even let them
pump their own tires and tools are quickly snatched away by the boys who
are taught that girls are not capable of working on bikes. This is not
always the case, but it is a relatively frequent occurrence.
I know Emily and David have both stressed gender equality as a large
component of both the VBP workshops and the EAB program. The workshops
and classes are viewed as a forum and place for women to comfortably
learn the skills of bike mechanics and repair without having tools
snatched out of their hands or being dismissed by male instructors or
students, as is all too often the case in other Ghanaian classrooms. But
of course these classes cannot exist within a vacuum, somehow exempt
from the cultural context and gender discrimination that are a part of
Ghanaian schools and life. I think the question Emily, Dave and I have
probably all asked ourselves is, while for the most part things seem
fine while we are watching the classes, what’s going on when we are not
there? Especially since even when we were present a few incidences
surfaced which brought to light the secondary status which women are
thought to have.
It’s easy to target the male teachers, to get incredibly furious at them
for not treating the girls in their classes with respect, for dismissing
their comments or for continually putting them in the role of servant
(retrieving chairs, getting tools, running errands ~ always the girls,
rarely ever the boys!). But the men and their attitude towards women is
merely a symptom to a larger problem of culturally upheld gender
inequality that has roots that stretch much further back than our male
EAB instructors. So what to do? How do you get to the root of this kind
of inequality and discrimination?
One way to go about changing the dynamic in the classroom would be to
actually get the men to think before they act. Some how something has to
get triggered in their mental landscape that causes them to think twice
before disrespecting the women. And in order to do that first they have
to realize that they ARE participating in discrimination, and even
before that that this kind of discrimination is not right or at minimum
will not be tolerated within this program. Well I’m not a psychologist,
nor am I Ghanaian and getting into the heads of some of these men just
does not seem like something that would be worth my time or energy to
do.
Another route is to empower the women through offering lead instructing
positions and give them the opportunity to demonstrate that they are
fully competent, smart, intelligent, confident leaders and certainly
anything but secondary. How will the men treat them in the classroom
once the women are given a forum to show how skilled they truly are,
additionally how much will the women be willing to tolerate once they
realize they can take the lead and work independent from the men
successfully? Hopefully we'll see. I was able to speak to the female
assistants several times throughout the training, both individually and
within groups, and they seemed really excited about the potential for
all women’s programs.
Once I finish follow up work on the Teacher Training I am going to shift
my focus to an all women’s workshop in Koloenu, the neighboring town to
Golokuati where we already have two women trained. A Peace Corps
Volunteer there has organized an after school group for women that meets
twice a week. We are going to focus on 1st and 2nd form students within
this group (around 15-17 years old), as they are younger and will be
around the community to share their knowledge. Another prerequisite will
be the student’s distance from school. We want to be sure to target the
women that have to travel the farthest.
Typically the workshops are held over the course of a day, but we’re
considering having the women’s workshop be two days so they can acquire
more skills. In addition to the all women’s workshop there will be a
mixed workshop for people from the community and an advanced workshop
for all former workshop participants to come and learn more technical
skills and have the opportunity to purchase tools for half price.
Typically workshop participants purchase their bicycles at the end of
the day for half the regular price, but since these participants are
students I am seeking sponsorship from folks in the states. They will
pay a small fee to ensure they feel ownership over the bicycle and
responsibility for it's upkeep. $50 will sponsor a girl to receive her
bicycle and there will be 20 participants in the women's workshop. This
is a great opportunity for those of you who are financially capable and
interested in supporting the program in a super direct way! If you know
other people who may be interested please pass along this info.
I'm really excited about encouraging the growth of our female
instructors and the potential of women focused programs .
Jaye
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