I have now retuned from Argentina. Leaving the environment has allowed me to reflect on the last weeks. I have structured me lessons into 3 questions.
How is it best to help these communities?
My volunteering was solely through sport. This gave me access to the different communities and an insight into the lives these children are living. Having reflected on my times there, to be completely honest, I cannot help but feel my impact is limited. I have clearly played a role, but 6 weeks is a limited amount of time. In addition, the charity needs to a constant stream of volunteers. Once I leave and if no one replaces me then the community will go back to similar outcomes. Labour does not scale.
This how now got me thinking what is the best way to improve these people’s lives Maybe this is the economists in me, but I have though about if I had £100 how could that money make the biggest impact in this community. Is it better to improve the water, get a better school teacher or buy some medicine. The charity plays a pivot role in helping the kids play and keep them of the streets. However, most of the children I accounted where 6-11 years old. Where was all the 12-15 years olds? I would feel that this is a more at risk age group.
Through this lived experience I feel that I have some pessimism on the reality of development. Many economists have these growth theories on how to reduce poverty, but the on ground reality feels different. It is all about people and institutions.
What does it mean to be a good teacher?
In all the volunteering a did, I was expected to lead sessions and help children. I took this with a big responsibility and this created some larger issues. For example, I could of played lots of games when I was coaching and not many drills. Games are fun, but do not develop the players that much. I could of pleased the children with games, but I knew this would be letting down their development. With only 6 weeks I could have had short term thinking, jus trying to please them, as I knew that I would not get to see their full development.
What I have learnt is you need to be individualistic. Having a consistent set of principles is fair, but for getting the most out of the class you need to appreciate that the children have different personalities. Positive encouragement for the shyer child and more direct communication for the outgoing person could lead to better results
Are we all the same? Nurture vs Nature
Despite being in a very different environment, are saw so many similarities. Firstly, within the hockey part of my volunteering, apart from the different infrastructure and language it all felt very familiar. The children wanted to play as many games as possible and did not like doing drills, this is the same in the UK. The club I played for had many students and functioned on the adults helping out them with lifts to game and paying for items. All the same issues with team selection, availability and the different sort of characters you have in a team were present. Yes their pitch might not be as nice, but the human aspect was the same.
This makes me think about what is driving this outcome. Despite being a few thousand miles from the UK, the behaviours we all very similar. This makes me believe there is some innate drive for humans to find a sense of community and belonging, whether that be a through a sports team or not. There is also an innate willingness to help people, this could be the older people helping the younger people, or the other players explain drills to be in English when I could not understand.
Overall, I do feel I have learnt a lot. I am just started a development economic module for my class and I already feel the lessons I learnt while volunteering impacting me.