Week 2
- Jun 11, 2017
- 3 min read
During this week at Esquel my job has been to systematize all the information recollected at the local workshops. Before I arrived Margarita and Dolores traveled to Cuenca (south of Ecuador), Ibarra (north of Ecuador) and Portoviejo (coast of Ecuador) to talk with women. They traveled with a designated person from UN Women who talked to the women, in these 3 regions, about the Sustainable Development Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. As well, she talk to them about the New Urban Agenda, it's purpose and objective.
Margarita and Dolores's job was to have a conversation with the women, to ask them and make them reflect about what do they need, what do their families, their children, their elders, their communities needs and wants are in order to develop in a sustainable way. What is our role, as women, for development? Why are we so important? If we are so important how are our needs being cover? Do we live in peaceful environments? Are our children being safe? Do they have education? Who takes care of our elders and little ones while we go to work, while we cook? Do we live in violent households? These were the questions and the discussions they promoted.
While reading the reports and the stationery and seeing the handwriting of the women, the answers they gave, while trying to make sense of their line of thought and how they want to resolve their problems and their children's problems, and they parents problems and their communities problems two things come to my mind.
The first Ecuador has many realities. Up here in this valley surrounded by mountains, in the mist of the city, in the noise of Quito, Ecuador has one face. In the rural parts of my country, in the cost, in the rural mountains, in the Amazon, Ecuador has many other faces. The faces of women of different colors and heights waking up every morning to go to school, to work in the country, to wake up their children, to cook for their families, to clean their house or someone else's house, to wash clothes, to take a bus, to prepare the food that is going to be sold on the side of the road. I have always known that a country, a region, a community has many faces, but it has never being as palpable as now reading the wants and needs of other women around my country. It seems as I am in a conversation with them. The stationary is divided in 5 columns (Problem, Solution, Hope and Responsable (divided in two: government and ourselves)) this methods allows me, the person who is gathering all the information, not only to systematize the information and make it legible and coherent but also allows me to hear the women's voices clearly.
How is a day in your life I ask? I am worried because I don't have a job, I feed my children from what I pick in my land but I don't have property rights and people say I need to or they are going to take it away. How do we solve this? More jobs should be generated in the rural areas, only cities keep growing. We also need attention from the state here, I can not legalize my land if I have to travel to a big city to visit the office that handles these things.
I can hear them, I can see their children's faces, I can understand what they need and where their proposal are coming from.
The second thing is how stunting it is how politicians in the National Assembly of Ecuador are debating, trying to find solutions to the problems they think ecuadorians have when women, who may not have a prestigious university degree, are so aware of their reality and the reality of their communities that they can so clearly see a solution. Politicians should always be in contact with their representatives. Otherwise, they may loose perspective and real sense of what they need.
The methodology used by Margarita and Dolores is clear. In one of their meetings they have told me that the objective is to systematize the information without altering it. This is a challenge, although the information is there the language is too colloquial and sometimes the information is very disorganized. I am working very slowly but have developed a method in other to properly link Problem, Solution, Hope and Responsable and merging and prioritizing the problems that constantly being repeated.
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