This week was the first at our internships and class. Operation Hope teaches financial literacy through a six-part series of lessons about everything from savings to entrepreneurship, and a few days ago I got to teach the first part to students at Lotus River High School. This was an interesting experience for me because I’ve never been drawn to education as career or felt that working with children was my calling. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say this has changed, I definitely enjoyed being able to interact with the kids at this school. The driving concept behind Operation Hope’s program is living a proud and self sufficient life, and so the first module we have the kids do is all about dignity. I start out asking the class what dignity is, and then respect, and then who they respect. These questions take a lot of personal introspection and certainly far more than a few minutes of consideration. Unfortunately, that’s all we have so I hope that the exercise at least sparks some thought.
Because of these lessons, I’ve been reflecting a lot about my own personal interpretation of what dignity means and how much I take that word for granted. I have my own standards, but I’m also becoming aware how fluid those standards are. Life experiences, such as this stay in Cape Town, change our values and the way we interact with people. Living a dignified life today may mean something very different than living a dignified life next year. In the same vein, dignity sometimes is a luxury. Especially knowing that these learners come from incredible poverty, I’m sure that they have witnessed ‘undignified’ money management. And yet I wonder if I’ve really given them the tools to address those kinds of financial issues in their homes, particularly in the context of dignity and the broader spectrum of their lives.
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