Youth for sale: Reflections from the streets of Bogotá: The power of empathy in street/life

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The power of empathy in street/life

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I find myself perplexed by the intertwined walkways of streetwork and everyday life...
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"He gave it to me...he did it to me...he took it from me...I understand how you feel," he said, "...in the pit of your stomach when those memories surface"..."When they are so vivid that you can't think straight...that words do not form correctly...that sentences are difficult to put together coherently...that everything around you is a blur...a snapshot in time...muffled voices...blank faces"..."I understand what it feels like to want to escape...to the point of standing on a ledge without even realizing you were that close to falling until you are back safely inside"...

Next time you may not be so lucky - there may not be people around to reach out and catch you...

The strength of those around me sometimes overpowers me and smacks me in the face with self reflection - I often fight moments of paralysis and/or catharsis spurred by the pain that comes knocking at my door or at times lies by my side...

Sometimes those who are closest to us get close for a reason...a feeling...a moment of solidarity....of empathy...understanding...shared experience...sometimes we don't even realize until it is staring us in the face...and then it all makes sense...

I have found this to be true as much in street outreach as in my everyday life in Bogotá - although the two are difficult to separate...I have found that the people who surround me now (at home and in the streets) have similar strengths, sensitivities, and wounds albeit unrecognizable at the surface level...

I am therefore trying to keep my ethnographic eye/'I' that much more alert to the feelings of those around me...to the reaction or suspicions I may have when I sense the lump in someone else's throat (almost as if it were my own)...

These days I find myself thinking more as a street girl than as the person who arrived to conduct doctoral research in Bogotá 15 months ago...

I see this as part of the process of adapting one's positionality to enter ethically into the research context and to operationalize or ground an 'ethics of care'...an ethics that implies actually caring about those we work with (as activists) and write with/for (as academics) - although these roles are interdependent and constantly evolving...

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Participatory Action Research (PAR): ABOUT US

Images of a deviant, wasted generation of 'nobody’s children' have become the dominant representation of street youth in Latin America. Media representations sensationalize the drug-ridden, trash-laden places where these young people are often found, while international youth advocacy efforts rely on discourses of victimhood and helplessness in order to gain momentum.

Through the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics, this research works against these disempowering and exclusionary discourses surrounding female youth in Latin American cities by allowing them to speak for themselves vis-à-vis participatory action research (PAR). The construction of research relations based on notions of interconnection, empathy, and mutual familiarity challenges the separation between researcher and participant and works to level the social field between these dichotomous categorizations that pre-define human relations and hierarchies in the research process. Thus, research ‘subjects’ become research actors and take ownership of the project, define its boundaries and design, and work to effect social change in their community and individual realities.

Using a geographic and gender-sensitive lens of analysis, thirty-three street girls provided insight into their everyday lives and spaces by leading a six-phase, eighteen-month PAR project that utilized a methodologically-innovative triangulation of participatory mapping methods, ethnography, and auto-photography to answer the following general research questions (that will necessarily change and take shape with the input of community members):

How do street girls construct geographies of belonging and affect within the larger backdrop of socio-spatial exclusion in the city? What places (both material and imaginative) shape street girls’ everyday lives and sense of belonging and exclusion? What social meanings are inscribed in these places? What specific activities, behaviors, and discourses render street girls out of place? What actions are necessary to make space for street girls in society and effect change in the community?

ATTEND OUR FIRST PUBLIC PRESENTATION AT UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES!

Research Funding

Pre-dissertation and research related to this project has been made possible by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and the Florida International University Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship. The researcher is also working as a volunteer with the street outreach team of Fundación Social Fenix.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0903025.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Dissertation writing support has been granted by the AAUW - American Association of University Women.

"Advancing equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research"

Lyrics:

Boys and girls wanna hear a true story?
Saturday night I was at this real wild party,
they had the liquor overflowin' the cup,
about 5, 6 strippers tryin' to work for a buck,
and I took one girl outside wit me,
her name was Lonni, she went to Jr. High wit me,
I said, Why you up in there dancin' for cash?
I guess a whole alot's changed since I seen you last...

She said-

What would you do if your son was at home,
cryin' all alone on the bedroom floor
cuz he's hungry, and the only way to feed him
is to sleep with a man for a
little bit of money and his daddy's gone,
somewhere smokin' rock now,
in and out of lock down,
I ain't got a job now,
so for you this is just a good time but for me this is
what I call life...

Girl you ain't the only one wit a baby,
that's no excuse to be livin' all crazy,
then she looked me right square in the eye,
and said every day I wake up hopin' to die...

She said-

[ - ] I know about pain cuz,
me and my sister ran away so my daddy couldn't rape us,
before I was a teenager I done been through more [ - ],
that you can't even relate ta...

***

What would you do?
...Get up on my feet and let go of every excuse

What would you do?
...Cuz I wouldn't want my baby to go through what I went
through

What would you do?
...Get up on my feet and stop makin' tired excuses

What would you do?
...Girl I know if my mother can do it, baby you can do it

***

[Lyrics provided by Sing365.com]