Project planning essay

Project Planning Essay

Improving the provision of psychological support to adolescent single mothers living in the shelter of the Asociación Civil Pequeñas Empresarias in Lima, Perú.

I. Introduction

This project aims to reduce gender based social exclusion by improving the quality of life of adolescent single mothers who live in the shelter hosted by the Asociación Civil PequeñasEmpresarias (APE) in Lima, Peru. This goal will be achieved by providing continuous psychological support to these young women in both the pre and post birth giving stages.

The idea is to treat young women with psychological therapy following individual programs designed according to their specific needs. The programs will be created and developed as part of a mandatory course for students of thePsychology Department of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) attending their last year of studies. The students’ skills, the programs and its suitability and effectiveness for each particular case will be in constant supervision and evaluation by the teachers responsible of the course.

The project will be co-implemented by APE and PUCP. The program will count with theparticipation of the Ministry of the Woman and Social Development (MW) and the Ministry of Education (ME) as consultant and controller agencies.

This is an innovative project because it goes beyond a short term economic and material assistance. Instead of focusing only on the satisfaction of the immediate needs of the young mothers living in the shelter it seeks to address the negative consequencesassociated to their condition, which affect their life projects in the long term as well as the life projects of their children.

II. Background and Context

Social exclusion is defined as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live”. (European Foundation, 1995:4) According to Sen, social exclusionis one of the aspects of poverty as it leads to capability deprivations and failures. (SEN, 1999)

Gender discrimination is one of the dimensions of inequality and social exclusion. “In gender processes, the everyday conduct of life is organized in relation to a reproductive arena, defined by the bodily structures and processes of human reproduction. (...) Gender exists precisely to the extentthat biology does not determine the social” (CONNELL, 1995:71)

Gender is related to issues of empowerment which should be understood not only in terms of domination but of “the capacity of women to increase their own self-reliance and internal strength.” (MOSER, 1989:1815)

Accordingly, attempts to fight social exclusion based in gender should consider the different roles women experience:reproductive, productive and community managing work. (MOSER, 1989) Planning should recognize this triple role in order to understand women participation within society.

Adolescent pregnancy is at the same time cause and effect of inequalities and gender based social exclusion. It contributes to the transmission of poverty as young mother’s children have higher probabilities to follow similardynamics.

Adolescent pregnancy in women with scarce resources aggravates the problem if we take into account that such circumstance diminishes their possibilities to conclude school and to achieve superior education. (PERINAL, 2003) Therefore, life plans of women after adolescent pregnancy is negatively affected as they turn to receive less income than women in ordinary situations. (PERINAL,2003)

According to the Peruvian National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, 13.6 % of the total population of women between 15 and 19 years old are adolescent mothers. Statistics in Peru and in most part of Latin America link adolescent pregnancy with situations of poverty. (Palma, 2004)

Raping, lack of information about birth control methods, hostile family and social environments,...