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Judi Aubel - Ivory Coast
Dr. Judi Aubel, Peace Corps volunteer in Ivory Coast (1970-1972), is now leading The Grandmother Project, an organization she co- founded two years ago based on 10 years of work developing a grandmother-inclusive approach to maternal and child health programs.
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Dr. Judi Aubel served in the Peace Corps in Ivory Coast (1970-1972) working up-country, teaching English in a secondary school.
She was always interested in languages and other cultures, and she studied international relations and African studies at UCLA. In the secondary school where she taught English, the students were from 30 different ethnic groups. This experience was an on-the-ground opportunity to learn a lot about different cultures and languages.
Dr. Judi Aubel is now leading The Grandmother Project, an American non profit she co- founded two and half years ago based on 10 years of work developing a grandmother-inclusive approach to maternal and child health programs.
For the past 20 years she has worked with numerous community health programs, mostly in Africa, but also in Asia and Latin America. She realized that most of the maternal and child health programs focus on young women of reproductive age and their children, while ignoring the senior women, or grandmothers. In Western-oriented programs, development staff often makes the assumption that young women are autonomous to make all health care decisions themselves.
This approach, which leaves out the senior women in the community (the mothers-in-law and aunties and grandmothers) who are the def facto advisors to younger women, is neither culturally appropriate nor effective. She decided that the senior women as well as the younger mothers should be involved to insure that these programs not only have an impact but also build on cultural roles. She founded the Grandmothers Project to strengthen grandmothers' roles as family advisors on health and education, and to strengthen intergenerational communication.
The Grandmother Project does not work independently, but likes to assist other organizations, such as Helen Keller International in Mali, World Vision in Senegal or UNICEF in Djibouti, to integrate an intergenerational dimension into their early childhood and community health programs, to "put grandmothers on the map" as Judi Aubel likes to say.
She feels that western aid programs invariably base their approaches on the western model of the nuclear family – as opposed to an extended family or village in which there are other familial and cultural influences that impact women’s attitudes and practices. Her training in anthropology gives her a more holistic or systems view of life as opposed to the view associated with medical training, which can be focused on individuals.
Her advice to social entrepreneur: “Put together a team of people who really understand and believe in the cause you are promoting.” In her case, she put together a team of people (some of whom are former Peace Corps volunteers) who have skills in program planning and management but who also are committed to the goals of the Grandmother Project. They can serve as advocates for an idea that is still not readily accepted in the development community.
CLICK on the player above to listen to her interview.
