MUSADE

Last Thursday we visited MUSADE, which stands for Mujeres Unidas en Salud y Desarollo (Women United for Health and Development).  They were founded in 1986 by a group of women who worked in a community hospital that was called "Hospital sin Paredes" (hospital without borders).  The women working there found that female patients were coming to the hospital, not because of physical problems, but because of emotional problems, which mainly were rooted in experiencing some sort of violence, often domestic violence.  So, the women in the community clinic began to offer mental health services for women, and as a result women felt safe going there without being judged.

The director, Enid spent some time explaining their history and various programs.

The agency has 4 primary focuses:

1. Ending violence against women (violencia contra mujeres)
2. Human rights (derechos humanos)
3. Reproductive rights (derechos reproductivos)
4. Creating a feminist economy (la economia feminista)

Much of their work is focused on prevention.  One way that they do this is working with youth, primarily they said they prefer to work with younger kids to start addressing gender inequalities from the beginning.  Having worked in the schools providing prevention driven information, I thought it was awesome they were able to work with young kids around this topic, since in the U.S. it is often so taboo.  Usually the response I received from schools was either, we don't have that problem, OR if we start talking about it people may come forward and we don't have the resources to support them.  While Costa Rica is a country of 4.5 million people that only has 3 women's shelters, they are still making the effort to talk about it, so why can't we??
The education for youth is primarily focused on:

• Handling power
• Gender and sex
• Conflict management and creating a culture of peace 
• Constructing the male and female identity

MUSADE is an international agency that partners with other countries addressing gender inequalities, including El Salvador and Nicaragua.  They also work with the Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres, a government run organization. 

While MUSADE still provides crisis intervention for women who have been abused, so many of their programs are driven by a prevention attitude, which is something that is still catching on the U.S.A.  One activity that they do, which I thought was super interesting, is they ask children to draw pictures of their mother's job for mother's day.  Most of the pictures show women doing typical "ama de casa" (housewife) duties.  After that, they do some education with the kids and have them draw the pictures again, and the drawings change drastically.  The final product is pictures of their mother as powerful, smart, and in charge.  Then they display all the photos in San Jose to create more awareness about the inequalities and messages children receive around gender roles...so cool!

I also loved all the messages of equality they presented at the agency.

Though, I have to say this was my favorite, and probably the most thought provoking.  It reads "yo decido", or "I decide".  What do you all think??

After the presentation, we had the opportunity to do a little shopping in their store.  In order to create economic empowerment, many of the women they work with get training to make artisan items, so they can support themselves after leaving an abusive spouse.  This program is called REMOC, Red de Micro Productoras de Occidente (network of micro-producers of the west).

 After visiting Roble Alto, which took a pretty paternalistic attitude toward working with children and families, it was refreshing to see a truly grassroots organization inspired by the feminist movement.  It definitely made me think of all my beautiful coworkers at Mid-Valley Women's Crisis Service, and how amazing it is to have agency guided by anti-oppressive ideology.

So, whats on the agenda for this week:

• Lectures from social work professors from the University of Costa Rica
• Volunteer Work
• And more spanish class!!

This last weekend we visited Volcan Arenal...so beautiful!  It was difficult to pull myself out of the hot springs to come back to Grecia, but its great to be back with my host family!