Features
We Are the World
Music course shows students way to make a difference for ‘poorest of the poor’
BY TERESA PITMAN
English professor and University research chair Daniel Fischlin was determined that the first-year seminar he taught in 2006 wouldn’t be an ordinary class.
“The course was called ‘Rebel Musics’ and was about different forms of music and music’s connection to social activism and resistance to violent models of how the world has become,” he says. “I didn’t want to go the traditional route of having students write essays to hand in for grading.”
Three years later, an e-mail message from Africa shows that the contribution of that non-traditional class started a cascade of benefits to a group of women who had little to hope for.
Instead of handing out a list of essay topics, Fischlin assigned a class activity: use music in some way to change people’s lives. The class had to agree on an activity, do all the planning and assign tasks. One thing the students were clear about: they wanted to help people who really needed help — “the poorest of the poor,” he says.
A student who had been to Ghana spoke to the class about the extreme poverty and difficult conditions in some parts of the country. He noted that the situation is even worse for women because of traditions surrounding their roles. They don’t have much education. Most sleep on the ground because they have to be lower than their husband. They can’t own or ride a bicycle. And because polygamy is common, a man who dies may leave behind four or five widows, who are often treated as witches and have no way of supporting themselves and their children.
With this in mind, the class began researching programs they might be interested in supporting and soon found the Northern Empowerment Agency (NEA), which promotes development in the poorest areas of northern Ghana. It is led by David Mensah, a former street orphan from Ghana who eventually earned a PhD from the University of Toronto.
One of the agency’s programs is a co-op for women, primarily widows. The NEA buys land and gives each woman an acre or so to begin with. They also receive — in the form of a loan — a bag of peanuts to plant, irrigation equipment and other tools needed to get their small farm going.
When a woman’s farm is producing well, she’ll repay the loan by returning a bag of peanuts and money for the equipment to the co-op. This, in turn, is passed on to another woman. At this point, the women who’ve paid off their loan are each given a goat, providing a further source of nutrition and income.
To raise money for this program, some of Fischlin’s students went door to door in residences asking for loose change, some tackled merchants in downtown Guelph and others set up booths at the mall. The biggest event was a sold-out concert at the Bullring that featured 10 bands, including some African ones.
Ultimately, the class raised more than $5,000 — enough to help 32 women start their own small peanut farms.
“The students were making a difference in the lives of people they’d never met,” says Fischlin.
And they’re still making a difference. Last month, he received an e-mail from Mensah saying the women sponsored by the class have graduated from the program and are now on their own with their peanut and goat projects. He reported that last year’s peanut harvest was the best in the program’s 20-year history, with many women breaking the previous record of 17 bags per acre.
“We can never express on paper how much this has meant to them and their families,” wrote Mensah, who noted that many of the women are now able to pay their children’s school fees, which is a major source of pride for them. “You and your students have moved these women from hopelessness to hope.”
Adds Fischlin: “The women will now be able to give back to the program so that another 32 women can be helped. So much can come from that one small initiative.”
Equally important, he believes this has changed the lives and perceptions of his students.
“We had a tremendous sense of collective achievement and empowerment at the end of this. Students told me: ‘I didn’t realize I could do this sort of thing.’ You can’t help but start to dream. What if those of us who have all this power and privilege did more of this on a regular basis? How much good could come of this?”