Men As Partners (MAP) Conference

Do you ever have those moments where you tell yourself: "Man! If I only knew about this/had do this sooner, it would've made life a lot easier?"

Throughout the whole Men As Partners (MAP) Conference (in French, Hommes Comme Partenaires), I kept telling myself that. It would've been perhaps the most effective training I could have received as a male Girls' Education and Empowerment (GEE) Volunteer and it was bittersweet that I was getting this training at the end of my service.

In any case, I thought it would be good to bring an extremely motivated and engaged counterpart, my friend and the President of the Parents' Association at my primary school (called APE - Association des Parents d'Elèves), Nazaire. I decided that he would be the best counterpart for the volunteer that replaces me, and what better way to introduce him to Peace Corps, our approach to community development and gender equality than by bringing him to the MAP Conference!

In essence, the MAP Conference compiled about 10-12 Peace Corps Volunteers from various regions in Burkina Faso, and each was asked to bring one motivated, male counterpart from their communities to participate. It was led by the Gender and Development (GAD) Committee of Peace Corps/Burkina Faso, and was the first of its kind to be done here.

Overall, an absolutely amazing training! We talked about gender roles, did many activities that you can find in our Life Skills book and were able to put to practice many of the things we learned throughout our 3 days of training.

My hope is that my replacement volunteer will have an easier transition to site when he/she arrives in September, and will have a counterpart that better understands Peace Corps, the GEE program and can work well with the new volunteer to get projects and activities going faster!

Nazaire and I during the last day, handing certificates to our counterparts.

Group picture -- all the volunteers and our counterparts.

One of my Peace Corps favorites, Lorena! And our matching US/BF pagne outfits. <3

Finally putting training to practice!

Earlier this week, all of us GEE volunteers had to do our Life Skills presentations at Model School. Leslie and I did our presentation on Gender Roles and their correlation to your sex (male/female) and how those gender roles vary by community/culture/society. We introduced ourselves and did a little ice-breaker, asking them to give us differences between the Burkinabè and Americans. Then we moved on to our activity...on the board, you divide it into three parts: masculin (male) on one side and féminin (female) on the other side with a space in the middle.

The part of the Life Skills activity where the students run to the board and put in their initial thoughts of a gender role they receive on a piece of paper.

Each student received a gender role or type of job (cleaning the house, taking care of the kids, power, beauty, doctor, tailor, etc.) that was face down. Once we said go, they had to flip over their gender role card, run to the board immediately and place the gender role under the column they felt best fit their gender role. By the end of the activity, you have a board filled with various gender roles in different categories and all the students were having some crazy debating.

You do the activity a second time but the instructions are a little different...you give each student a gender role again, face-up and ask them to think before going up to the board. They have to ask themselves: "Can a man, a woman or both physically do the gender role written on my card?"

The second time around was really interesting because everyone placed all of the gender roles in the middle category, meaning they applied to both male & female. On the féminin side was "pregnancy" and on the masculin side was "constructing/building a house." This is where it almost turned into a mini-riot because some students were arguing that women can build houses; it's just that here in BF, women normally do not while others argued that women don't have the power to physically build houses, nor have the money to fund them.

The whole point of this was to emphasize that gender roles are dictated by what the culture/society/community says...an example being a Burkinabè girl and an American girl. While they both share the same sex, their gender roles differ due to where they grew up. Such a powerful and interactive activity that's getting me more excited for some of the things I want to do while at site…and got me thinking about future careers after the Peace Corps (teaching /education policy, anyone?)!

A pretty blurry picture of me teaching Life Skills. So much fun but definitely a lot of work! I have even more respect (if that's ever possible) for teachers in the U.S. and abroad.