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Abigail
M. Hatcher
Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar
University
of
Cape Town
I grew up on the East side of Indy in a poor area of town.
When I was 12, my family moved out to Zionsville, where my parents live.
The drastic shift from inner-city to suburbia shaped my understanding of
the United States, and the way that poverty influences education, housing, job
options, etc. I think I am only now
beginning to understand how important my upbringing was to my worldview; even in
the U.S. there are huge problems associated with class and race.
This worldview has become solidified in South Africa, where class and race have
created one of the most unequal societies in the world.
Driving through Cape Town, where I am earning a masters in Development
Studies, offers a view of inequality that is nearly unparalleled throughout the
world. Within five minutes on the
highway, you will notice informal shacks made of corrugated steel as well as
multi-million dollar mansions surrounded by professionally-groomed gardens.
The contrast is overwhelming at first: how is it possible for one family
to sleep on a dirt floor without electricity while down the road, cooks are
preparing meals for infants whose parents dine at the local country club?
The realities of South Africa are defined by contrast: stunning, beautiful
landscapes of oceans and mountains meeting with the dust and destitution of
impoverished rural areas; warm, friendly people who open their hearts at every
opportunity even though the country was (and is still) plagued by the hatred of
apartheid. Yet, something about the
dichotomous nature of South Africa makes me feel alive and energized.
There is so much hope here, so many people moving forward to define a new
future. It is difficult to become
complacent when you have a divergent environment that keeps you constantly
on-guard.
My work and passion has been based far from Cape Town, in a rural mining area of
Limpopo Province. The project is
called the Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity (IMAGE) and
is a joint effort between a university and a microfinance organization.
IMAGE combines gender training and HIV prevention with microfinance
activities.
IMAGE is the first intervention in sub-Saharan Africa to study key structural
factors of HIV vulnerability: poverty, gender inequalities, and gender-based
violence. Even though researchers
know that these huge, societal factors influence the spread of HIV, it is very
difficult to design a project that can alter them.
How do you impact poverty in an area of South Africa that has been
exploited by mining capital (through segregation to the ‘rural
homelands’...then forced removals due to apartheid...and now mining
sub-contracting) for the past 100 years!?
The project has three parts: small loans to poor women, training on HIV and
gender to these women, community mobilization training to a select handful of
women who choose which projects to implement in their village.
1) small loans: IMAGE partners with
Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF), a leading South African microfinance
initiative. Through
‘participatory wealth ranking,’ SEF asks community members to rank the
relative wealth of households. Then,
according to this community-driven mapping, SEF invites the poorest women to
participate in its loan program (it is rare for microfinance orgs to target the
very poor like this). Five women
form a trust group within which they apply for loans and share business advice.
The participants themselves run twice-monthly Loan Centre repayment
meetings and decide when to increase loans to the other trust groups.
2) training: Sister for Life (SFL)
is a gender training and HIV prevention curriculum, and is incorporated within
regular SEF loan repayment meetings. SFL
is based on ‘participatory learning and action’ principles which involve
participants in communication, critical thinking, and leadership.
The curriculum addresses key issues of gender roles, sexual norms, and
domestic violence. For example, one
session asks women to ‘map out’ their activities in a 24-hour day (cooking,
cleaning, preparing children, selling things at market, sleeping, having sex,
everything). Then they ‘map
out’ a man’s activities (eating, sleeping, visiting friends, having sex,
everything). At a session I
observed, they discovered that 6 hours of their day are spent doing things
‘for themselves’, the other hours are spent on activities ‘for other
people’. The men, on the other hand, spend 18 hours of their day
‘for themselves’. It’s one
way to start discussion on the fact that women’s roles are created by the
community, but aren’t necessarily ‘natural’ or ‘fair’.
3) community mobilisation: Key
leaders of Loan Centres are chosen by their peers to attend a week-long
participatory Natural Leaders Training in leadership and community mobilisation.
Trained by members of the community, who speak Sapedi, the Natural
Leaders re-learn gender and HIV curriculum, then learn how to lead members of
their Trust Bank in a community mobilisation plan.
Upon returning to their Trust Banks, Natural Leaders lead fellow IMAGE
participants in creating Action Plans. Action Plans have taken many forms:
couples counseling; a Rape Association that works with local police to combat
domestic violence; a sit-in at a hospital notorious for its poor care of
patients; a “Women against Crime” committee which successfully forced
shebeens (small local bars) to comply with legal hours of operation.
Basically, IMAGE has done an extensive job of documenting the impact of the
project. It wants to prove that the
programme has impact on three groups of people: women in IMAGE, their adolescent
children, and adolescents in the greater community (who will hopefully learn
from the programme as info is ‘diffused’ throughout the villages).
They will be able to prove impact through in-depth qualitative and
quantitative interviews over 4 years (looking at indicators like knowledge,
stigma, conversations surrounding sexuality and HIV, social cohesion, partner
relationships, spousal abuse, female decision-making, non-spousal relationships
like ‘sugar daddies’, condom use, HIV infection rates, etc...).
My role is as a researcher in what is called a ‘process evaluation’.
The process evaluation will examine the way that IMAGE operates, how it
might be replicable in other contexts, and what problems it has had in
implementation. I’ll be doing
interviews with staff and other NGOs (non-governmental organisations), as well
as data analysis and report write-up.
The exciting part of my work in Limpopo is that none of it would have been
possible without Rotary. I found
out about the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship from a counsellor at my
university. I remember reading
through the application with my mom and thinking, “this sounds exactly like
me!” Throughout the entire
application process, Mark Weir was my mentor.
He helped me refine my application and brush up for the interview.
Yet, I remember the entire process being really fun and exciting, and
when I found out about representing District 6560, I couldn’t have been more
proud.
The most rewarding part of my scholarship has been connecting with the
Indianapolis Club. I was able to
spend time with two Rotarians in Cape Town, and to brainstorm ideas about Jayne
During’s Kuabe Foundation and to discuss my interest in microfinance with
president-elect Elaine Bedel. Also,
it has been wonderful to have the continued support of Wendy Barboza, who is
consistently asking questions keeping me updated through email.
Lastly, it was so rewarding to hear about Indy Rotary’s partnership
with Eldoret, Kenya’s Moi University Hospital, because I worked with Dr. Joe
Mamlin two years ago in the Moi Pediatric ward.
Now, Gregg Keesling and Marty Moore are spear-heading the effort to
bolster Rotary’s support of Moi University.
It is so satisfying to feel that my ‘Africa’ world and my
‘Indiana’ world are colliding.
Rotary has change my life because it has altered my understanding of the world.
I have known for many years that the only way to learn about the realities of
poverty is to live in it, see how resilient people can be, and support them to
take action. Spending time in
Limpopo has been an opportunity to experience poverty first-hand, and to see how
strong, ingenuitive women can transform their situations for the better.
I was asked at my last Rotary speech in Cape Town, “Why would you go so far as
Limpopo Province when Cape Town itself has many problems?”
I have also been asked the same question by an activist friend of mine in
the U.S.; “Why would you go to South Africa when the United States could
really use your help?” These are
challenging questions, but I think this week, in Limpopo Province, I am finally
able to articulate the answer. My
friends here, the women I work with and the women I visit at microfinance
meetings, invite me into their world in a way that I have never experienced in
busy Cape Town. I stay at their
homes, I eat their food, I learn their language (albeit very slowly!), and I
play with their children. They tell
me, “this is the first time I have had a white person as a friend,” and I
find it hard to believe that we are truly in the post-apartheid, ‘new’ South
Africa. However, I know that having
this experience first-hand is the only way that I will ever be able to
authentically change it. Knowing
these women intimately shows me that change is possible, and that I can be a
part of the transformation.
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