Field Trip: Girl Rising

For the field trip, I chose to go to a showing of Girl Rising in the University Center hosted by the International House on October 23rd. The documentary shows the horrors that women all over the world go through in order to get an education and also things that can happen to women if they are not educated and ways they have to resort to living. The film was split up into individual stories of young women. I wanted to briefly discuss parts of the stories of three of the young women to give a glimpse into what the documentary was about.

A common theme throughout all the stories was persistence. These young girls persisted on and keep pushing towards a better future for themselves even as they had horrible things happen to them. The first girl they showed on the film was named Wadley. She is eight years old from Haiti. Before the earthquake, they showed her enjoying school. After the hurricane, the teacher of her class was charging the children's parents money to keep the school going. She tried to turn Wadley away, and Wadley told her that she was going to keep coming back everyday even though they had no money. It was inspiring to see that a child who had her home completely destroyed still wanted to be a part of school and a part of the learning community with her classmates. Her teacher shocked me though, because I did not expect that she would turn students away for lack of money after a natural disaster like that.

Another girl, Suma, from Nepal in the film was also really persistent in her education but also in wanting freedom for all young women. When she was very young, her parents sold her to a Master so that she would have a place to live and food to eat since they were very poor. She talked about the horrors of abuse that her Masters put her through, and she talked about how songs kept her going through the abuse. She would sing songs and make up songs about her everyday life as she worked.

A teacher was a lodger in Suma's third Master's home. He convinced Suma's Master to let Suma enroll in a night class with other kumlari, unpaid workers. The class was run by social workers, and the teacher stood up to the Master about the laws of domestic violence and labor laws. He also talked to the Master about human trafficking and injustice. The teacher was also persistent every time that the Master said he would not free Suma, the teacher came back. Eventually the Master let the teacher take Suma home to her family. Suma now goes with other social workers and teachers to the homes of Masters with kumlari and advocates persistently for those young women's freedom like the teacher did for her.

Suma's songs kept her going through the horrors of being a kumlari. Ruksana, a young girl in India, had a similar hope in art as a street girl. In one of her classes, she was kicked out for drawing instead of listening. On the way home her sister kept telling her how angry her father would be at her. The father's response was perfect I think. When she got home, he took her to an art store and bought her a sketchbook and pencils for her to draw in. He talked to her about how it was really important that she had an education and was able to break the chain of poverty living in the street. He said her sketch book was for art and to please do her school work in her school books. Throughout her story, her family wouldn't have money to put food on the table and eventually their slum was torn down and they had no where to live at all, but the father was set on how important it was that his daughters have an education.

To me personally, I thought it was really interesting the links of art and music almost as symbols of hope in these desperate places. Art is something that is very important to me personally, and I think this shows the great importance of the subject to people in general but especially children. In my future classroom, I want to make sure that I always have art materials around and encourage exploration with them but also just doodling. Even if it's a huge mess or not an actual "picture", the motions of making art can be therapeutic and really great with the fine motor strength required to make accurate letters.