Cross‑Cultural Community Participation

Technicians in Chagas’ control and other health projects sometimes confuse the idea of community participation when they imply that they have the solution to the problem. Technicians should endeavor to educate and activate peasants to participate in finding a solution. If technicians have already decided upon the solution, there is no room for alternative solutions. Cross‑cultural community participation (CCCP) is a term that I have coined; it involves lengthy discussions with all members of the community (including women and children). CCCP does not have simple answers to prevent Chagas’ disease; it allows people to arrive at solutions after they have been presented with the facts in terms that are meaningful to them. It involves serious discussion as to why peasants behave as they do. Why, for example, do they keep animals in the house? If this is not seriously considered, they will continue to do so no matter how nice their new house is. This has been the experience of the housing project in Tarija. CCCP demands that technicians negotiate change only after considerable discussion takes place and understanding is achieved about values and why people do what they do. CCCP is a pedagogy based upon an epistemology of exchange: knowledge is mutually arrived at between interested parties. This is essential for Chagas’ disease, principally because of its social and cultural complexity that affords no unilineal or vertical approach.