By Patrick It wasn’t hard finding the hotel set to host the conference where I was headed. These things are usually held in buildings tall and proud, four or five star hotels. I’d never spent time in Mexico City but I found my way around quite easily. The evidence of former mayor and center-left opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s collaboration with Rudolph Giuliani in the “management” of his city rang true with my first steps outside. The sidewalks were clean of trash and police were constantly visible, assuring that a significant radius around the Zócalo upheld an appearance of opulence within a city receiving impoverished immigrants daily from a militarized and economically liberalized south. Hotel Bristol was neatly tucked away at one end of a roundabout in the gleam of barbed wire from the nearby United States Consulate. I walked into doors held open to spend the next few days observing the MenEngage Regional Consultation with Latin America and the Caribbean. MenEngage “is a global alliance of non-governmental organizations that are involved in an array of research, interventions, and policy initiatives seeking to engage men and boys in effective ways to reduce gender inequalities and promote health and the well-being of women, men, and children.” I came with the intention of learning from communities represented by delegations from seventeen different countries. I wanted exposure to new educational tools and strategies used to reach men in gender violence prevention. But I was also coming from two years spent in Washington, D.C., steeped in the world of the non-profit world dominated by a desire for money and access to power, in exchange for progressive social change (or so we’re told). I worked with the organization Men Can Stop Rape, which understands the need to see men’s violence as an issue requiring the attention of an entire community, old and young, male, female and transgender, professional and working class, black, brown and white. However, it was a constant challenge in the office attempting to focus on work deep and direct with communities rather than solely responding to the centralized institutions (health departments, universities, corporations) that provided the financing and placed the demands for the direction of our work. My time in the big Capital to the northeast of my western Virginian home was my first experience being paid to do social change work. I was a trainer, facilitating workshops around the country, and it was nice to not have to pay for my own gas when traveling. However, at the most fundamental and personal level, more often than not, I felt like my Pisces-self, a fish out of water. It was expected that I be the “expert,” and travel to where people could pay for that expertise. I was used to working with a community that I was a part of, rather than imposing a prepackaged vision on someone else that I had little real relationship with. I continually felt the need for my own men’s group, my own community, addressing a problem that is about our most basic and intimate relationships. In a recent interview with a member of VOCAL (Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomía y Libertad) about the influence of non-profits here in Oaxaca, I heard similar frustration with this profit before strategy organizing style, common to the non-profits increasingly gaining influence since their big influx in Latin America starting in the 90’s.

Average: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

No votes yet