- Give three compelling examples of how cultural issues affect your project.
Three examples of cultural issues which affect the approach of our project include the perspective of child-bearing in Sierra Leone and the positive associations tied to having a big family, competing with indigenous religious / witchcraft practitioners and the perception of Westerners attempting to disrupt the system in Sierra Leone. Given our products are going to be marketed for malnourished pregnant mothers and children under the age of 5, we have to navigate its implementation in a fashion that is inclusive of the community and respectful of their culture. This incentivizes the inclusion of community members for easier cultural immersion as it becomes introduced. Practitioners of alternative medicine thwart how we can present the benefits of preventive health because as Khanjan mentioned, “everybody loves miracles”. Especially when one trusts their faith over medicine, it will be harder to convince mothers and children to eat something twice a day over an extended period of time to better their health rather than a practice aimed at addressing their concern in a shorter time frame. Fertility rates combined with a youthful population growing up in a post-civil war environment makes the market we target spread far and wide; by addressing it in Makeni, we have to also consider how the system can be made sustainable for an entire country.
- Have you experienced or observed any of these social situations at home? Describe atleast three such situations.
My mother is a first generation immigrant who has always favored preventative / alternative healthcare practices and the opinions held by family members / other latinos over seeing a doctor / trusting American healthcare. She believes hospital visits / appointments should be last resort solutions when attempted treatments are ineffective so I have familiarity with the challenges of trusting traditional approaches to medicine and using alternative medicine as a manner of cultural preservation, resourcefulness, and saving on costs. She would even have herb-based medications sent from her native country because of her trust in nature over the pharmaceutical industry. While I can honestly say they were effective, I understand how developing the trust for traditional medicine is hard especially when the cultural representation is not present to establish better patient-provider relationships. I imagine our ideas for Sierra Leone will be easier to understand when translated and explained via a community member that can relate more than we can. In terms of child bearing, my mother comes from a family of 8 and currently cares for my brother and I. She does not believe having a large family given our socioeconomic status is realistically beneficial; this is a sentiment her siblings have shared as they have immigrated to the United States. Because the sense of community here differs from the Carribbean, there is less security felt with having to worry about more children than one home / family can handle.
- Give three examples of cultural practices that can be leveraged to addressed community / market problems.
The perspective of large families relates to the fact that with more children, mothers can delegate their children to assist them with different kinds of work; while easing the workload they must undertake themselves, the extra hands allows for more efficient work to be completed in agriculture and overall proves to be a worthy investment for families seeking to bring more money and prestige to their name. Malnourishment is an impediment toward a family’s ability to grow and maintain steady productivity, so by incentivising the consumption of our products, mothers and children alike can be more physically able to endure labor and make them less prone to disease / complications arising from nutrient deficiencies. By introducing the product to women who are members of Bundu / Sande, I believe we would be able to tap into the most appropriate yet respected demographic that can model and attest to the benefits of either food product. Given we are able to achieve success, I feel they would be more comfortable and willing to market our products to other women and vouch using their personal experiences. At the same time, by using a product that the women within the community benefit from and can introduce to their children, we take advantage of the relationships and trust already present within the community. As the number of children and mothers who consume our product increases, I hope the recognition can be enough to make our products seen as an alternative to seeing a practitioner of alternative medicine. While we don’t want to dissuade people from an established piece of their culture, we are able to empower them with a choice that emphasizes a preventative approach to health and redefines how they may perceive improving the health of children and pregnant mothers.