Educational Empowerment at Chaska: Addressing Gender Inequality among Internal Migrants in Cusco, Peru

By Naiyear Khajavei

In the summer of 2022, my colleagues and I had the privilege of interning with Chaska, a small non-profit organization in Cusco, Peru. Chaska is dedicated to using education as a tool for addressing the cycle of poverty and gender inequality. Many of the girls enrolled in Chaska's programs come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and their families heavily rely on the scholarship support provided by the organization to access education. Complicating their circumstances, many of these girls belong to a transitional generation, their families having recently migrated from indigenous "campesino" communities in surrounding areas to the former Incan capital of Cusco. For many families, this internal migration marks a critical and vulnerable period as they navigate language differences and discrimination from those living in the city. Chaska acknowledges that this vulnerability can have especially lasting and lethal impacts for girls and women for generations following. Peru itself grapples with alarmingly high rates of femicide, and women and girls in transitional generations experience heightened levels of structural and interpersonal violence. Perpetuating this vulnerability is a financial dependence on men in a culture that values the patriarch and provides few opportunities for women to earn money independently. Moreover, numerous transitional-generation females lack educational opportunities and exposure to the Spanish language, predominantly communicating in Quechua, an indigenous language prevalent in the Peruvian Andes and regions of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. Upon our arrival, Chaska's families were in the process of rebuilding following the exacerbated resource disparities and the subsequent loss of vital mental health support staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Against this backdrop, my colleagues and I arrived at Chaska, feeling especially aware of our power differential as a group of women interning in association with a master’s level program. Upon our arrival, John, the program director, insisted that we sit down to a long lunch and shared valuable insights into the cultural dynamics impacting migrants in Cusco across the initial three generations. The generosity in which John shared his knowledge – and his commitment to keeping us fed – in this initial meeting was maintained during our two months with Chaska. Over the following days, through collaborative discussions and numerous cups of coffee, we evaluated and prioritized the community's needs, mindful of our ethical and time limitations as interns. Together, we formulated a tentative plan for creating impactful outcomes and documenting the informal systems that Chaska had already created.

As we prepared to make ourselves useful, we revisited the programmatic tools gathered from our first year in the International Disaster Psychology: Trauma and Global Mental Health (MA) program at the University of Denver. High on our resource list was The Inter-Agency Standing Committee Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) in Emergency Settings (IASC, 2007). The IASC MHPSS pyramid is a comprehensive framework that guides mental health and psychosocial support interventions during humanitarian emergencies, though its principles can be applicable in a wider variety of settings. It encompasses four levels of intervention, namely basic services, enhanced support, specialized services, and integration into existing systems. Especially foundational to our work, the pyramid promotes a person-centered and community-based approach, recognizing the significance of involving affected individuals and communities in decision-making processes. With this in mind, we embarked on the development of a monitoring and evaluation plan as a foundational step in assessing the impact of Chaska's programs. Rooted in the principles of David Fetterman’s Empowerment Evaluation theory, we utilized the community's knowledge of itself and their expression of needs as a catalyst for a series of achievements. We dedicated ourselves to creating evaluation tools, meticulously designing scorebooks for effective record-keeping, and crafting a comprehensive handbook available in both English and Spanish. We utilized ongoing feedback to make sure these resources fit the program’s needs and abilities. 

In conjunction with our monitoring and evaluation plan, our needs assessment also highlighted the program’s desire – and limited capacity – to address mental health symptoms and conduct safety assessments. It was then that we faced the ethical dilemma of being asked to provide clinical services to girls who desperately needed them. With the awareness that our clinical involvement would be inappropriate given our short internship allowance and limited understanding of the culture, we sought to resource the program in the ways that we could. First, we sought to create a comprehensive map of mental health services in Cusco, taking into account the additional barriers imposed by recent migration, language differences, and financial instability. This process was scaffolded by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee's (IASC) guidance on assessing and mapping local resources in their toolkit for humanitarian response. While the COVID-19 pandemic prevented us from physically visiting the clinics we had hoped to collaborate with, we entrusted these resources to the capable hands of our organization, confident that they would serve as valuable assets in the near future.

Given the limited availability of mental health services and the associated stigma, we also prioritized the recruitment of local mental health support staff that was lost in the pandemic. Based on the core principles for empowering local systems in the context of Global Mental Health, we recruited a local woman, Glenny, who possessed the natural abilities to connect with and empathize with the girls in the program and provided her with as much training as we could during our time. To guide Glenny’s work with the girls at Chaska, we worked together to create and adapt content for group activities that aligned with the specific needs in the community. For this, we relied on informal interview results, relevant research publications about community mental health needs, and utilized activities from the Girl Shine program model published by the International Rescue Committee. Along with this, we created resource packets with tips for encouraging positive coping while being mindful of the risks of trauma-processing without having the adequate skills and time. Nestled within this resource was guidance on assessing for any safety concerns and recognizing when to move from encouraging coping to helping someone find a higher level of mental health intervention. In exchange for Glenny’s involvement in the program, John will be sponsoring her education and helping her to complete a university degree in psychology. Witnessing her integration into the organization and the positive impact she had on the girls filled us with joy and reaffirmed the significance of our efforts.

Reflecting on our time at Chaska, I deeply appreciate the trust bestowed upon us and the authentic bonds forged with the program. With the generous support from the Center for Immigration Policy and Research, I dedicated nearly 400 hours to this unpaid internship. Throughout this period, we actively acknowledged and addressed power dynamics, remaining mindful of the context in which our support was offered. As a result, program leaders gained empowerment, propelling Chaska toward a resilient new chapter in the face of COVID-19's challenges.