#forabetterfuture

Week 3 has come to an end and I could not be happier about it but concerned at the same time, and let me tell you why.

Our week started by Maria and I having to meet principals and student counsellors of our participating schools previous to conducting our survey, which gave us a feeling that our research is finally happening. After having these meetings, we sent our material to print and we were ready to start our project next day!

Tuesday arrived and it was time to work with our first group of the 3rd form (13-15 y-old) at St. Michaels School (SMS) where everything seemed to be under control, but I must admit that was intimidating at the beginning to be the “Ma’am” at the front of the class and to get the attention of teenagers. 

The following day we used it for typing data into our “analytical system” and to take care of minor tasks. 

Now, on Wednesday we went to St. Leonard´s Boys School (SLB) and we were so much looking forward to this school since we estimated it to be the most difficult one we had to deal with. Surprisingly we had no difficulties whatsoever, perhaps because of the type of discipline they have there (remember the story of the two boys that got into a fight?), perhaps because teachers and the student counsellor were checking on us once in a while. I believe our major challenge at SLB was the language since most of the the students carry a strong Bajan dialect which we find hard to understand. 

Finally, we went to Graydon Sealy School (GSS) on Friday not knowing what to expect since we did not have the chance to observe/participate in this school with Dance4life. Here the students were so polite and disciplined by always standing when the professor entered the classroom and by waiting to hear instructions. This order ended up giving us 15 min extra after completing the survey, time we used to have conversations about their lifestyle and eating patterns (picture bellow). On the following week we will have two more classes participating on the survey, followed by our SSB workshop.  

After sharing with you this brief anecdote of our first week under our project, I would like to share with you some observations and reflections I experienced. Even though we haven't finished collecting data and haven’t started to properly analyze it, I got already a big idea of how the results will look like from typing the data into our analytical system.

Is not only shocking/concerning to see the responses we got from the first groups, but to observe the environment these adolescents are surrounded by and to see how they are trapped into unhealthy circumstances is upsetting. You see, the schools not only provide “unhealthy meals” to the students (which tend to be chips, SSB, pastry, fried food, energy dense food, etc.) but they have street vendors just outside the school – from where we saw quite a large amount of students buying chips and sodas as breakfast. As well, they have teachers and/or student counsellors selling their products which again vary from SBB, pastry, ice pops, white buns with a tiny peace of cheese, etc.

Adolescents getting chips, pastry and SSB as “breakfast” from street vendors. 

That brought me to think - How or to what extent can policy makers work with problems such as decreasing overweight and obesity, banning SSB, etc., if a whole system as the culture of a country needs to be changed!? And I say culture because for every day I get to experience here, it seems that it is in its very core to have a high consumption of SSB, fried food and process food, with low consumption of fruits and vegetables and no physical activity. Supporting a little more my point of view, on our survey we get to ask questions as “if you eat a homemade dinner, what do you usually have?” and most of the responses have been falling into the categories “something fried” and “warm dishes like stews”. Now, thinking optimistically that kids don’t go to often to fast food restaurants/get fast food meals thus eating mostly at home, it does not necessarily mean that they are better off from these places if they eat fried-processed food with sodas at home.

That on a side, Barbados is facing the challenge of bringing back their traditional meals such as cou-cou and flying fish, cassava, breadfruit and sweet potatoes amongst others – due to these dishes/foods reminding people of slavery times, issue that the Ministry of Agriculture is dealing with.

These are only few challenges policy makers and health professionals have to deal with, and I am happy to say that it only encourages me to make a difference in this world and to answer my question soon as possible.

Mindmap