Day 2
With the Co-director of Lahore University Social Innovation lab still absent there was a change to the usual schedule. Instead we had session in our project groups with the ever inspiring Josie Francis who today reminded me how insightful she is when she made the observation that sexual assault in the UK is invariably committed by suspects known to the victim. Stranger rape in the UK is indeed very very rare. Unfortunately, after Josie’s statement we learned stranger rape in India (or at least in the experience of Jindal students) was common. However, this was useful as stranger rape then became a legitimate target for our efforts. We then started to think about how we would go about solving problems through the conduit of improving our new friends eating habits. I learned, as I did at the University of Southampton mental health lab, that asking why? , why? , why?, is a useful method of interrogating a problem. I had previously found it a bit childish and unprofessional so need to come up with a way of asking it without sounding like my 11 year old cousin.I began to work more comfortably with the Jindal students as you would after a few days. We were tasked with producing a solution to the healthy eating issues we had discovered using stationary, pens, string and biscuits, along with our thirst to do well and imagination. However, and I’m not ashamed of it at all, our group did not come up with a solution and instead chose to represent one of the problems through a role play. Sodexo are the Universities caterers and we found that students feel the contractors do not do every thing they can to encourage healthy eating. This what not the result I expected as I had thought we had an issue with lazy students who liked fast food. After another lovely lunch we returned to work. We started to discuss the project and began to narrow down our topic to tackle over the next few days. In the evening we travelled to a restaurant. The women in our group who are strong, intelligent women I am proud to work along side, noticed women were absent from the roads and road side restaurants. (Dhaba) Our thoughts were it was due to safety but perhaps this was because were had been hearing stories regarding women’ s safety. However, I doubt it was anything else. The meal we had was at Amrik Sukhdev was a high end high priced restaurant and low and behold more women started to appear. Perhaps women who can afford and expensive meal can also afford to travel safely to such eateries?
Alexander Dawson 