Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [147]
The fourth floor of the Center includes a meeting room, a classroom for the oldest girls, and a quiet room where the girls can meet privately with Bahia Street’s psychologist. The top floor is tiled and in the process of being fitted out for a science lab. Bahia Street has realized that it needs to focus on science and math, not only for younger girls, but also for the high school–age girls, in order to give them access to professions poor girls have little chance of entering, even with Bahia Street’s standard level of support.
The floors of the building are still rough, the molding unfinished, but the process has been incredible, the entire project planned, built, and designed by local people. I now realize that they will continue to work on it for as long as it exists; it is an edifice that will never be “finished.” That’s because the building has now become a fluid living embodiment of the community itself.
Bahia Street now teaches sixty girls; it also extends its support to their caregivers and other community members through workshops on domestic violence, sex and reproduction, parenting and nutrition, literacy, numeracy, and computer skills. Rita has established training sessions for the Center’s teachers to encourage further learning and, with Bahia Street support, staff members (kitchen helpers, etc.) have also been finishing high school; the first one has just passed her university entrance exams.
Under Rita’s direction, Bahia Street now also provides funding, support, and guidance for several small projects for children and violence prevention that local groups have started after being inspired by Bahia Street.
Among the Bahia Street girls, twelve have entered university and more than twenty have graduated from high school. Paula now has a university degree in nutrition, with Daza soon to follow. Aninha is graduating from high school this year and will be taking her university entrance exams. And since Claudia, not one girl in the last twelve years has become pregnant while in the Bahia Street program—a remarkable testament to how a community program can change behavior.
Fio left Bahia Street to take care of his elderly parents, a hard blow to Rita, but she now has a strong group of young women working around her, including Bahia Street graduates (who are earning extra money to help with university expenses). Christina still comes periodically to Bahia Street gatherings, but Claudia and Patricia have disappeared. Their loss taught us that educating a child in solitude only separates her from her family and neighborhood, fracturing a community rather than strengthening it. No part of a society can be cut out and changed alone; the entire community has to participate. For this reason, instead of just adding girls to the Center, Bahia Street has expanded to include programs for caregivers and other community members in areas they themselves consider important. The results have been dramatic. No longer do caregivers grow jealous and try to undermine their children; now they are uniting to grow more powerful together. The girls remain connected to their neighborhoods, and the graduates are indeed seeing themselves as representatives for self-directed change.
Because of Bahia Street’s success, people often now ask me if I plan to replicate it, to build a multitude of girls’ schools in its image. I reply that I can offer models for international support, but the project must come from the community, not from me or any other outsider. A Bahia Street reproduced, no matter how perfect it might initially appear from the outside, would not be Bahia Street at all, but merely another institution imposed on an impoverished community, which would then be expected to participate and, in addition, show gratitude for doing so. No one, impoverished or otherwise, gains self-esteem in that.
It’s dangerous to believe that one successful project can become a panacea for all the world’s ills. Replicated projects may seem an easy way to promote equality, but it is ultimately ineffective. Another community may