The Most Productive Day Ever!

Last week did not begin well. The past few weeks have been very overwhelming, both emotionally and mentally. Work has also been moving slowly and it has been frustrating trying to stay positive in the face of many challenges.
But on Wednesday I had a breakthrough!!! The community audit officially began.
On Wednesday I trained two of my colleagues to be research assistants for the audit. We did a short training covering interviewing and data recording techniques, as well as a basic introduction to gender-based violence and active listening. I decided to approach this audit with two goals: the first to obtain the most accurate information possible, and the second to do this in a way that is supportive to the participant. I could not imagine asking extremely personal questions without accounting for the emotional and mental ramifications of the exchange. My colleagues completely understood this, and quickly got on board with the concepts of ‘survivor’ instead of ‘victim,’ and non-directionality. One woman, Linly, is the librarian for CAYO and up to this week, I had not interacted with her that much. She is very quiet, and I stupidly took that to mean that she did not have a lot to say. She has been especially committed to the study and you can see her excitement when we discuss the ideas of gender-based violence. On Friday she went out in the pouring rain (voluntarily) to hunt down some teen mothers to interview. On Thursday the first interviews were conducted. I did one with a juvenile justice officer on his experiences with gender-based violence in the courts. He explained that women do come forward to report violence, but since the courts are so understaffed, the case often goes nowhere. And this then discourages other people from reporting. He also told me that the majority of cases are punished by a fine to the perpetrator, but again, due to staffing gaps, the fine is rarely enforced.
The second interview of the day was the first participant interview with a teen mother. Linly conducted it as well and it went so well. The on Friday, Linley did two more teen mother interviews (reaching our quota of three for that district). I also met with a group of commercial sex-workers and three agreed to do individual interviews starting on Monday. The women were fantastic – laughing and joking all the time. They were warm and only laughed at me a few times J
It feels incredible to see all of the planning and preparation of the past two a half months finally come into fruition. There is still a long way to go (69 more individual questionnaires to go), but it is at least a start. And now there is finally something to put in my mid-term report for CIDA this week!