As volunteers we are expected to work with a community in helping to identify assets within and difficulties surrounding said community. To accomplish this we have started to collect a repertoire of different tools, especially useful in creating discussion. One of the first tools we experimented with, as a CBT group, was community mapping.
One of our first days at the D.C. we divided the students in into one group of boys and one group of girls. Each group was supposed draw a map of their community and identify which places they spent the most time at. This week we got the maps out to compare them with one another. The girl’s map had the high school, the dar chebab, the hammam, the mosque, the hair salon, the market, the s-suq and a coffee shop. The boy’s map had many of these things but also included the soccer field, a swimming pool, a night club and as you can imagine didn’t include the hair salon.
We asked the students to look at the main differences and first asked the girls if they played soccer. They did play soccer, but only at school. We asked them if they swim. They said they do swim but they only swim in other towns. They would not swim in there community. Why would the girls be allowed to swim outside their community but not within their community, however the boys could? As the discussion unfolded this is what we found:
The community that we live in is rather small and everyone knows everyone. The girls said they felt more comfortable going to a club or the swimming pool elsewhere. They said that if they go here (in what will from now on be known as CBTville) everyone knows their business and they are harassed about it. They said they felt more respected by people that didn’t know them than the ones that do.
This also opened up discussion about another topic. One, 17 year old, girl pointed out that in CBTville the number one problem is prostitution. She has 5 friends that she could think of, off the top of her head that prostitute themselves. You can make $2.00 every time you have sex with someone. The prostitutes in CBTville have created a bad reputation for all women in the community. The girl pointed out that if you go out at all it is assumed that you are a prostitute so it is better to go to a city ten or 20 minutes away (to go dancing, swimming or whatever it may be) where you can avoid the situation entirely. It was a very interesting discussion.
The gravity of the topic however did not bring anyone down, in fact it also created a forum to discuss solutions. Some ideas were to create a training center for men to give them skills, keep them in work and off the street where they can get in trouble. And more importantly create a girls center where the girls could learn different crafts such as weaving, so that they could support themselves.
It is fascinating how just by asking these kids to draw maps and then by asking the right questions a whole debate can be started. We didn’t tell them that prostitution was a problem or how they should attempt to fix it. They told us. And essentially it is our role to give them a safe space to have those discussions.
