Description |
This 15-week online course guides students in understanding the conditions of marginalized populations (e.g. street children, substance users, commercial sex workers) and in formulating a theology and strategy for team-based responses that aim to free individuals and change structural causes.
“Marginalization” affects individuals and groups, restricting or excluding people from meaningful participation in society. The restrictions and exclusions may result from minority or caste status, disabilities or addictions, gender or sexual orientation, religious or political identity, or “exploitability” due to age or geographic dislocation. Marginalized groups are often singled out from others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment. As objects of collective discrimination, they are forced to develop their own attitudes, codes, and even “cultures” which are, at best, only partially intelligible to others.
This course focuses particular attention on major challenges faced by two marginalized populations within urban poor communities: children and women. The United Nations (Millennium Development Goals) and thousands of NGOs worldwide consider these two populations to be of primary importance. To explore the everyday reality of slum children and women is to run up against the issues of urban poverty, malnutrition, low-quality education, labor and sexual exploitation, gender-based discrimination, the orphan crisis, children as child soldiers and refugees, and patterns of substance abuse. Each of these realities threaten basic human rights and call for in-depth understanding and response, whether in the form of policy formulation, collective (e.g. church) interventions, or personal acts of compassion. |