Slum Doctor Programme is responding to the needs of those halfway across the world. We fulfill those needs by supporting those who have already responded locally(in their own regions of Kenya/Uganda) with appropriate and effective solutions. We are proud and honored to do so.
However, over and over we end up confronted with local needs and the shortfalls of our own society, our own leaders, our own social systems.
Last year SDP initiated a global AIDS education program addressing the local need for a global perspective. AIDS has been killing people for 30 years now all around the world. Yet, much of our education system has ignored the depth and the breadth of the suffering and destruction AIDS has caused. So it has been our hope to reach out to our youth locally and begin a conversation about AIDS, not just what it means for them, but what it means for the world.
However, my personal experience in discussing AIDS with students has been mixed. The naive zeal that I initially had for describing the horrors of poverty and disease in far away places has been burdened by the harsh realization that many of these young people face, to some degree, the same hardships in their own home. Many of them are ignored, abused, sick, hungry, voiceless, and desperate.
These students usually identify themselves with an angry retort after our introduction. “Why should I care?” From no other lips could this question be valid. Tears come to my eyes when I am forced to agree. Why should you care about someone so far away who is sick, when those in your home seem to care less about you.
I don’t think this is a reason for us to stop speaking to students about what we might think are “far away” problems. In fact I think its even more reason to introduce a world that is large, diverse, mysterious, and full of pain yet full of hope to young people. I imagine the kid whose home is completely broken and getting through the day is as far ahead as they can think as the one who nees the gobal perspective most. They need to know that the brokenness they are experience is 1. an experience held by much of the world and 2. not simply “the way the world is.” They need to know that their parents or whoever their oppressor is, is but a thin wall blinding them from a world that doesn’t accept the way things are or seem to be.
So as I had to argue with one of my recent students, “social studies IS important.”
