Latest / DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates / An old episode to start a new series: Inclusive Education with Maya Kalyanpur

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An old episode to start a new series: Inclusive Education with Maya Kalyanpur · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

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From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children,
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this is Dive In. I am your host, Federico Vitaler,
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professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to Divinity.
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For this summer episode, I'm bringing you a classic.
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That's right. That's a fancy way to say a recycle
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episode. But before you accuse me of being lazy,
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let me explain. Well, I may be lazy during the summer, but let me
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explain. I'm getting ready for season four of
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Dive In. Believe it or not, we are about to
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start our fourth year. Fourth years? You've been dealing with me for fourth
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years. So sorry about that. But honestly, when I started this podcast,
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I wasn't sure I will make it through four episodes, let alone four seasons.
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And that is all thanks to you, our loyal listeners,
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who have been diving in with us for the past three years.
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And to thank you, I'm making a dangerous promise
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for season four. Two episodes per
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month. Okay, I say it. I cannot go back now. Now,
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I have absolutely no idea where I'm going to find the time
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to do it. Maybe I'll cut back on my eating. Maybe I
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sleep less. Maybe I'll stop spending all those hours building intricate origami
1:34
sculptures. Well, actually, that's not true. I cannot do origami.
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My fine motor skills are.
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Let's say my fingers have never really
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agreed to work as a team when it comes to arts and crafts, let's put
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it that way. Sometimes I think I should sue my kindergarten teacher.
1:53
Then I remember I spent most of the art class trying to sneak outside and
1:57
play soccer, so I don't know how that will help me in court. So maybe
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the problem was on my teacher. Wow, this podcast just turns into a free therapy
2:05
session. No. Bad. So let's close it here. No, no.
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Anyway, after the success of our Overrepresentation
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series in season three, I have decided
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to tackle another controversial and divisive topic in
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the education of students with disabilities.
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Inclusive education. For decades,
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scholars, educators, families and advocates have debated
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where and how students with disabilities should learn.
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Some argue that students should be fully included in the general education classroom.
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Others argue that some students need more specialized settings and
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supports to thrive. And as I did with the Overrepresentation
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series, I'm going to bring you voices from across the
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debate spectrum and everywhere in between.
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Over the past few weeks, while I was taking a
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break from watching the soccer cup. No, no, I mean writing academic paper
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just in case my dean is listening, I've been
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interviewing some of the leading scholars in the field. I'VE been having a lot of
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fun and I've been doing a lot of learning. I've been having conversations
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with Doug Fuchs, David Connor, James Bashan,
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Mel Ainsco, Valentina Milarily, and several
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others that I will have for surprise
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for you. Beginning in July, I will be
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releasing these interviews as part of the special series on inclusive
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education with two episodes each month throughout the summer
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and fall. So stay tuned.
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But while I'm being busy putting
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that series together, I wanted to revisit an episode that feels
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like the perfect warmup. Today. I'm bringing back
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my conversation with Maya Kalyanpur, originally recorded at the
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beginning of 2024. In these episodes,
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we explore inclusive education from a global perspective of, with particular attention
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to the Global South. Dr. Kalempur is a professor
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in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of San Diego. She began
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her career teaching children with intellectual disabilities in India,
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served as an international advisor on inclusive education to
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Cambodia's Ministry of Education, and has conducted extensive research throughout
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South Asia. Her work has also made important
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contributions to the conversations about equity and special education in
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the United States. So, in short, if you are interested in inclusive education,
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this is a good place to start our journey.
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So are you ready? Let's dive in and warm
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up for what promised to be a fascinating new season.
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Thank you. Maya Kalyanpur, to be in our show today.
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We're so happy to have you. Thank you so much, Federico,
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for inviting me. I'm delighted and honored. Yeah, it's such such a,
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such a great opportunity that we have to learn a little
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bit about what's going on outside of the US in terms of inclusive
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education, especially education in terms of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
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I mean, now the first question that I have for you is, can you
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explain to our audience what is the Global south
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and what is an important distinction? Okay,
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that's a good question. Let me briefly explain sort
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of the historical evolution of the term first of the term Global South.
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So I think many people might remember the term Third World.
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That was something that was often associated with the kind of work that we were
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doing at that time, and that has fallen out of disfavor.
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So just to explain, so we had the First World, which was basically Western
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Europe and North America. We had the Second World, which was the Soviet bloc,
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and we had the Third World, which was the rest of the world that had
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basically been former colonies. And so they were struggling. They were
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not doing very well as we moved further into
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sort of the end of colonialism, sort of the formal
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Colonialism, you know, sunsetting on the British Empire kind of thing.
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We moved more into an understanding of a
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continuum where we placed countries on a continuum
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of development. We had the Human Development Index, for instance.
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And so we had countries that were developed and
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countries that were developing or underdeveloped.
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And so then that's when we moved into, okay, then the Third World,
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when it fell out of disfavor, we started to use terms like developing
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and even less perhaps under developing.
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And then over time, I think we've tried to move away from
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that construct as well, because the
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countries that we expected to move towards development haven't
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necessarily really achieved those. And we'll talk about that
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in more detail later in the interview, I'm sure.
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And so we have moved away from this continuum
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of developed, developing, underdeveloped,
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and now we talk more about the Global South.
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And what tends to happen is that there is
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a binary, a false binary that's been created. Global north versus
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Global South. And again, it's very much similar to the tension
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that existed in terms of the economics of countries.
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So the countries that had been the colonizers having
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already developed. And so the Global north is often associated
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most, most closely with developed
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countries. And the Global south is most often associated
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with countries that were formerly colonized and are trying
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to move up along that continuum of development. But that
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is essentially the distinction that's made.
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So I want to then add to that to say,
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if we look at those statistics and those economic and social
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indicators that we use to, to separate
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the Global north and Global south in terms of developed
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and developing, we actually find pockets of
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development even within the Global North.
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So there are minoritized and marginalized communities
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within the Global north as well.
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Economic and social indicators for many
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communities that are, are marginalized, are poor,
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and outcomes are very poor, very similar to the
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kinds of poor outcomes for people in the Global South.
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And then in the Global south as well as development has taken
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place and we've moved towards neoliberal globalization, there are large
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pockets of affluent people and very elite communities
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in the Global south who, who enjoy many of the privileges
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of people in the Global North. And so I
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do want to make the distinction that while we use terms
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like Global north and Global south as
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a geographic understanding, really what they are is a political construct,
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it's an economic construct. And we need to keep that in mind as we use
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these terms. Yeah, you make a great point. So it's not such a draconian
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distinction of like Global South, Global North. Here's the division no
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it's like there is a lot of permeation, right? A lot of movement between
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those. And I can think like even communities from the Global south migrate
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to the Global north and having Global south kind of experiences
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too there. And it was interesting. It made me feel a little bit
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about my childhood because I was born and raised in Argentina. So I was born.
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All my life, I always hear we are the third World. We're on the Third
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World. It is great because I never knew what the second world was.
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So now I learn I always knew there was a first and third. There was
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always something missing in the middle. So I just learned something new.
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Thank you, Maya. And tell me a little bit how your engagement
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with the Global south has shaped your development as a scholar
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and your work that you have done in the U.S. i mean, you have worked
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with great people, Beth Harry, and other people and help produce a
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very robust what if work, how that has been shaped at your experiences
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in the Global South. So the first thing is that I am like
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you from the Global south very much sort of the Third world kind of thing.
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So I grew up in India, and I was a teacher for
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students with special needs in India before I came to the U.S.
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mistakenly, I realize now, looking for answers. I hope
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I wanted. I wanted to become a better teacher back in India. And so I
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came here looking for answers. And that is really.
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So that experience is what shaped what I brought, the lens that
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I brought when I came to the States, because I
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began to immediately notice what eventually became, in a way,
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the title of a book that I wrote that I co authored,
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actually, with Beth Harry, whom you mentioned a minute ago, called the Culture of Special
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Education, where I began to see that the way in which
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we define who is disabled, the kind of services that
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we provide, all of this is very defined by
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the culture and the concept that disability itself
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is a social construction. I began
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to see that very early in the work that I was doing in
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the courses that I was taking. And I started to use that lens in
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the research that I began to conduct. So way
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back, the first communities that I began to. So to
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give you an example, I remember our professor
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saying group poems were the best thing that happened since sliced
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bread. Now, I didn't understand that simile of sliced bread, because that's
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a very American term, but I sort of understood the
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meaning that was trying to be communicated, that group homes were an answer to
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all of the problems for adults with disabilities. And I remember
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thinking that only makes sense within this context in the
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US where group homes have emerged from institutions and
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the whole movement towards deinstitutionalization. So that was the
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history from which group homes were emerging. And I
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thought, but what about countries like India and
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other countries within the Global south where there was no tradition
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of institutions, there were no services at all?
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Can we then reject group homes as an option or
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any. Or do we say, that's the direction that we go in and we actually
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create more isolating environments? Because right now they are
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within their communities. Are we creating false communities by
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creating group homes? And so those were some of the tensions that I was
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beginning to notice. And so I started my
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work originally, actually working with culturally
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and linguistically diverse families within the US to
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understand how they experienced those differences and how they navigated
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through this sort of culture of special education when they
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might ascribe to very different values. So we talked about,
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for instance, rights based, the idea that
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as parents, you have the right to question, you have the right to demand.
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Does that sit easily and well with communities
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and families who haven't necessarily seen
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experienced entitlement and don't come in with that stance
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or that posture of demanding?
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So how would they respond within an IEP meeting?
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The question of choice. You have so many choices of services and
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being able to choose. And so, for instance,
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what can happen in an IEP meeting is that the
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professionals are saying, yes, we want you to participate, but the understanding
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of participation may be very different from the understanding of participation for a
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family that has very different values in
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terms of do you make demands? Do you say, I have the right to,
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I would like to choose this. And that's
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what causes attention very often in IEP meetings within the US and so
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those were. That's what drove some of the work that
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I did initially with Native
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American families, with African American families and Asian
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American families as I continued to do my research over here.
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And then I went back to India
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to do my PhD dissertation,
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I was working with low income families there. And that's when again,
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I saw the tension between my own experiences
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and their experiences and the sense of, you know,
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how again, the culture had defined their understanding of disability
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and services very differently from the way in which I understood
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them. Interesting. Fascinating. Yeah. And the idea, I mean,
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some of the things you say made me think the idea of group homes,
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it's also based on the idea of independence. Right of
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being independent and being individual, right of
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being emancipated out of your parents and family as soon as
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you can, you know, and some of us may feel about that
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about our families, but that's another issue. But that's a very
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cultural. This is a very U.S. cultural thing. Because maybe in India,
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people don't want independence. Maybe they want to live more in family
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and communities. Is that all right? That's exactly right.
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And thank you for bringing that out. That was the fundamental issue, is that it's
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very much a collectivist society. And even typical
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children don't necessarily move out of the family home. When the
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son gets married, the bride comes to live with the family.
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And so if that's not an expectation,
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so if that's not an expectation from any child,
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then why would we understand that a child with special
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needs needs to be, in a sense, you might almost say, pushed out of the
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home into a group home? And so that was one of our first concerns.
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The other was also in terms of work.
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You know, work was being defined as work that you did that was valued,
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that you got paid for, that you did outside the house. And again, we came
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from. And when I say we, I. I mean Dr.
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Beth, Harry and me, we came from cultures
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where a. There were so many
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poor people themselves who were out of jobs. And so were
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there positions available for the children of affluent
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families who were looking for ways in which they could be
17:46
occupied. And so did we want them to be, you know, earning something outside of
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the house? What were the ways in which it could be done? And so
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those were, yes, some of the concerns. And over time with the work that I
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was doing, for instance, I noticed that what parents in India want
18:03
is a job where both their.
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Whether it's their son or their daughter is safe,
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more so perhaps for their daughter, but as much for their son.
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So they were always looking for connections within
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the community that they engaged with to
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help them to find a place where their son could be employed.
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So they would talk to somebody who owned a small business or
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maybe worked in a company or something and said, can you
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create a job for my son where he could work? He needs a little
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bit of help. He needs some modifications, he needs some accommodations.
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But on the whole, this is where he could be. It's also
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related to caste in India that you want
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people to be working at a caste level at which they are. And so there's
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an issue in terms of occupation for girls. The question
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was, can we find something to keep her occupied
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while she's working from home? Because that we see as being the safest
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place for her to work. And so perhaps starting a beauty salon,
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or maybe she
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does piecework for a garment industry, things like that. So that becomes a
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way in which they see independence for the child rather
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than sending them out of the house and into
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the. What we might see within the US as the community.
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Fascinating. We've been getting already in some of these issues, but I wonder
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if you can identify or tell us about more differences between the
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Global south and the US in terms of including students
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with disabilities.
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Here I feel the
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biggest difference, really. And yet in a sense, a similarity is
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that international aid organizations have been very instrumental
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in setting the agenda for inclusion in
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the Global South. The interesting thing is that they have
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looked to the Global north and identified the direction
20:11
in which development for inclusion occurred and used
20:15
that as the template, as it were. So they said they
20:20
looked at inclusion, they looked at mainstreaming,
20:23
integration, all of those terms that we used to use before. And they said,
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this is what we need to do in the Global South. And so you had
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the Salamanca Statement, you had the uncrpd, which is
20:34
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities,
20:37
which again defines what inclusion looks like.
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And so the Global south has really been pressured in many
20:45
ways to follow that path and
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that template. And I feel what has happened is that that
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has not recognized the local context
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within the Global south for how development
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has taken place. There is this assumption that development
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must look the same. So it's all about democracy,
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human rights, capitalism. Those are sort of
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the trinity, the holy trinity of development, as it were.
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And that's the direction that people are encouraged to go in.
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And so that's why then you have these policies and these standards of what
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inclusion should be. But it makes it very difficult when you
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don't necessarily share the same history. The example that I gave of group homes,
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for instance, group homes emerged from a history of institutions
21:42
which again, fell out of favor. You moved into deinstitutionalization
21:46
and group homes became a very viable option. Well,
21:50
they're not necessarily a viable option within countries where
21:54
there weren't institutions. Or they're viable options in very different
21:58
ways because there are no institutions at all. And the same
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thing might happen in terms of inclusion. So really beginning to recognize
22:07
how does the community function?
22:11
What are the values within the community? How is disability seen
22:16
and understood within the communities is something that
22:20
needs to be taken into account. I'll give you an
22:24
interesting example from a study that was done by Hussain
22:29
and Sanders, and I forget their last name,
22:32
but this is about work that they were doing with children
22:38
on the prosthetic devices, the legs that they needed
22:43
in Cambodia. And they asked the children what
22:48
was the kind of prosthetic leg that they would benefit
22:52
from. So they were trying to sort of co design this with children. And the
22:56
children explained that the prosthetic
23:00
devices that they got right now didn't make it possible for them
23:04
to climb trees. And the authors said their first
23:09
reaction to that was, oh, yes, they want to play with their friends and this
23:12
is making it difficult for them to play. And as they questioned them
23:16
more, they began to realize it's got nothing to do with play. These children
23:20
already knew that because they already had this prosthetic
23:25
leg that they were going to be precluded from play.
23:28
Their point was that these
23:32
legs that they had were not built for their
23:36
needs and they did not allow them to participate in contributing to
23:40
the family income. So it didn't allow them to work. It was
23:44
a whole different take on the purpose of that prosthetic
23:50
device. And then what they did with this
23:54
conversation is they co designed a prosthetic leg
23:58
that was much more suitable than towards
24:01
this outcome that the children saw as being more important.
24:05
And that's what I mean by understanding the
24:09
context, understanding how do you include children within
24:13
the Global south is really understanding what are the values
24:17
and in a sense allowing the indigenous
24:21
knowledge to emerge so that then what we create is
24:25
much more in tune with what makes sense within those communities
24:29
and those societies. That is great. What I get to promise is you
24:33
need to really get that perspective. You really need to get to the meaning
24:37
of those people. Not just big concepts like inclusion, but also like
24:42
tools like a prosthetic legs. Right. Or any other tool that you're going to present
24:45
to favor inclusion. It may be
24:49
interpreted and may mean enough in very different ways that may want it
24:54
to be used in different, more ingenious ways. That's fascinating.
24:59
You have done a lot of work in India and I'm curious, can you tell
25:03
us a little bit about what are the most pressing issues when it comes to
25:06
students with disabilities there? The first issue is the issue of
25:10
access is just getting students with disabilities services,
25:15
whether it's inclusive education, whether it's special education,
25:19
rehabilitation services.
25:22
All of the reports that have come out, all of
25:26
the research that's come out has shown that for one, part of the
25:30
problem is that in India there are large groups of children who
25:34
are marginalized anyway. We have girls, we have Dalits,
25:37
we have Muslims, we have poor children.
25:41
So in a sense it's instead of the sort of the minority over representation
25:46
in special education, we actually have a majority underrepresented is
25:50
an argument that I've made in one of My papers. And so we're struggling with
25:54
the fact that there are more people out of school than there are in school
25:59
in many ways. And then reports have shown that children
26:03
with disabilities are the last group to be included to receive services.
26:07
So access is a huge issue. And that is one of the problems.
26:12
But what I've also noticed is that as
26:16
we've moved towards education for all, and we are now
26:20
trying to provide services for all
26:24
of the children in India who have been historically
26:29
deprived of these services, we are actually leading
26:33
in a direction that may not be necessarily responsive
26:37
or healthy for these communities and these groups.
26:43
What I'm noticing, for instance, and I think,
26:47
let me sort of put a pin on that thought,
26:51
I think that part of the reason, and this goes back to the previous question,
26:55
is because we haven't questioned enough
26:59
some of the assumptions that we brought when we talked about inclusion,
27:03
when we talked about schooling. And we imported
27:07
almost large scale, whole scale structures
27:12
from the West. So the way in which schooling takes place,
27:15
for instance, that children need to be of a certain age,
27:19
are in a certain grade for a whole year, there's an
27:23
exam that takes place, there's a curriculum, Schools are buildings that
27:27
students come to. So there are certain structures about schooling
27:32
that we have just adopted and I'm not necessarily sure
27:36
if they make sense within the cultures
27:40
that they've been adopted into. Now, I understand that we're too far gone, we can't
27:45
go back and we start dismantling those structures. But I think that if we start
27:49
to assume, if we start to question that assumption
27:53
of whether that makes sense, that might help us a little bit. And so
27:57
to get back to the point that I started with is that.
28:00
So one of the, the directions that we're
28:04
going in that I see as being troubling is that
28:08
as we're trying to accommodate all of these children who have been left
28:13
out of the educational system, we are accommodating them in a school
28:17
system that was not necessarily built for them and
28:20
built with them in mind. It was built for affluent
28:25
people who could afford to go to school, who knew English,
28:29
you know, and could afford to postpone not
28:34
earning money at a very early age. And, you know, so the
28:37
economic dividends of going to school and going to college before they
28:41
start to earn. So all of those structures haven't been taken into account
28:45
as we've created these educational systems
28:49
for students who are now being pushed into these systems
28:53
that don't necessarily work for them. And so in the
28:57
most recent study that I did, for me, the Most
29:01
troubling direction that I see emerging is that under
29:06
this guise of education for all, what we're actually doing
29:10
is we're creating a new group of marginalized
29:13
students, students that we're calling learning disabilities,
29:17
learning disabled, and they're being pushed out of the
29:21
system. So on one hand, we have this education for
29:25
all slogan and this effort to bring everybody in.
29:29
And because the systems don't necessarily respond to
29:33
these very different needs that these groups have, we're actually
29:37
ending up then creating a whole new group of students who
29:41
are going to be pushed out of the system.
29:44
And so we're not. I don't think we're answering the
29:49
question call for inclusive education by doing this. If we don't question the
29:53
direction that we're going in. Wow, fascinating. Some things made me rant
29:57
the U.S. i mean, some things are completely different. But for example, the idea that
30:01
you create, you know, you have an initiative or a policy to include students with
30:05
disabilities, let's say, in the US The Education for a Little Handicap act,
30:08
but ended up actually being a separate system that really didn't change
30:12
anything on the school system. Right. Which is have a separate system.
30:16
We deal with the issue of exclusion at that moment by creating a
30:20
separate system rather than changing the main problem,
30:24
which was how schools set up participation,
30:28
how school thinks about learning, how schools think
30:34
about what a student should be. Right. Yeah.
30:38
Very fascinating. Do you think there are some lessons
30:42
learned there on the Global south that we can bring out and learn in the
30:45
US So that's an interesting question because usually this
30:49
question gets quite. Yes, exactly.
30:53
For our audience, it's just like in a Chester with my hand saying,
30:57
like, it's the opposite. Right. You always think, oh, what we can learn from the
30:59
U.S. but I think there's some lessons learned from this Global south that we could
31:03
be incorporating. And I think you have some insights on that. And I think that
31:09
before I go into what can the US Learn from the Global South?
31:13
I would like to say, I hope that the Global south,
31:18
when it hears scholars saying the kind of things that I'm saying,
31:22
that they will sort of. That scholars and
31:26
practitioners will begin to believe in themselves and recognize that
31:31
there is a wealth of knowledge within the Global south that needs to emerge,
31:35
that needs to come out, and. And that systems and services should
31:40
really be built on that knowledge rather than bringing in what
31:45
is happening in the west. Because what is happening in the west is not applicable
31:49
to a large extent within the context in which Global
31:54
south practitioners and scholars work in. So I want to put that out
31:57
there for people in the Global south to understand.
32:01
But I also think then in the same way the
32:06
US Needs to understand then that
32:10
it doesn't have the answers. That in many ways
32:14
the educational systems that have been set up are broken
32:18
and don't respond to the needs of students who have also in
32:22
the US been historically marginalized. And it needs to use
32:26
that lens of what can we do differently now there are many scholars
32:32
of color,
32:36
scholars with disabilities, who are engaging
32:40
in understanding anti ableism and inclusive
32:44
educational models within the US and they're bringing their lens to
32:49
say, yes, this is what didn't work for me. And so this
32:54
might be a different way of looking at it. And I think that's the scholarship
32:58
that really needs to be brought out and embraced because
33:02
that is recognizing ways in which these different values,
33:06
the interactions and the relationships that teachers
33:10
and students have had traditionally in these
33:14
pockets, these Global south pockets within the U.S.
33:18
those are the aspects that need to be brought out. And that
33:21
whole educational system, the concept of standardized testing,
33:25
for instance, there's something so fundamentally wrong with it. We know
33:29
that tests and IQ tests are
33:35
culturally biased. Moving away from that as a way to
33:38
assess students, genius, really, these are
33:43
things that I feel like the US could learn from this experience and
33:47
move in ways that would be much more responsive to really the majority of
33:51
the students within the US and perhaps everybody would benefit.
33:56
All children would benefit. That's fascinating. Thank you so much,
34:00
Maya. You know, I always ask all my interviewees
34:05
two questions. The first one is,
34:09
what three pieces of advice do you have for special education
34:13
scholars who wants to program equity and justice
34:17
in their research? Okay, I'm not sure if I have three pieces of advice.
34:22
We'll take any. We are sold.
34:24
Okay, how many can we offer? One, perhaps one large
34:29
piece of advice? Perhaps. All right, sold.
34:33
So I referred to it a little earlier when I said
34:37
tap into our own strengths and assets. And I feel like we
34:42
need to keep in mind the context in which we are
34:46
working as practitioners and as scholars recognize
34:50
the concept of situated analysis, as Alfredo
34:55
Artilles mentions, and the nuances within which we
34:59
are working and really understand perhaps our own
35:04
intersectionality and our own positionality. So what
35:08
are the ways in which we intersect with the communities
35:12
that we're working with, but also the ways in which we may not and
35:16
be aware of that and allow an opportunity
35:20
for perhaps a co construction of these indigenous
35:24
knowledges? So working with people rather than working on
35:27
or for and giving
35:32
opportunities for these strengths,
35:36
these cultural values, these understandings to emerge
35:40
so that whatever we recommend, whatever we build from
35:45
that is built on that foundational knowledge, on that grounded
35:49
knowledge of what makes sense within those communities.
35:53
Thank you, Maya, so much. That has been a recurring theme in this podcast.
35:57
Many of the interviewees that we have here,
36:00
they have said similar things about doing research with communities,
36:05
utilizing and uplifting
36:09
the epistemologies and the funds of knowledge of the communities.
36:13
It seems like it's such an important pillar for special researchers
36:18
doing issues of equity and inclusion. Thank you very much for that.
36:23
My last question, I will let you go after this, I promise.
36:27
Where would you like to see special education research in
36:32
five years in terms of equity, diversity, inclusion?
36:38
I'm already seeing this, and I hope that this is a trend that
36:42
will continue. We are seeing more and more scholars and practitioners from
36:48
highly marginalized and traditionally marginalized communities now
36:52
emerging and their voices becoming more vocal
36:56
and more recognized and embraced within the research
37:01
community. And so I think that this is a good trend because it
37:05
will definitely give us much more information than
37:09
we ever had. We'll be able to move away from what
37:14
was essentially a very mainstream Eurocentric white structure
37:18
and be able to understand what are the ways in which we can respond
37:22
to the needs of students who don't necessarily belong to those structures and
37:27
may ascribe to different values. So I feel that's a
37:30
big way in which we need to go. Going back
37:34
to my point about questioning assumptions, even things like,
37:38
what do we mean? Questioning assumptions like, what do we mean by equity? What do
37:42
we mean by diversity? What do we mean by inclusion? So starting off the conversation
37:47
by engaging in this kind of dialogue so that
37:51
we come up with a shared understanding
37:55
before we proceed with conducting research or we identify
38:00
policies or we develop practices, what is the
38:04
outcome? What is the way in which we understand? So if
38:08
group homes don't make sense, if working
38:13
outside the home doesn't make sense, what are some structures
38:17
that would make sense for young adults? What are some inclusive
38:21
ways in which we can operate that would make sense
38:25
within the community and the. And society? So really beginning
38:30
to look at, you know, as I said,
38:33
questioning the assumptions that we come in, don't assume that we know anything.
38:38
And, you know, almost. I think that some of your other
38:43
guests have also talked about a stance of humility, recognizing that
38:47
we may not have all of the answers and being open to what those
38:51
answers might be from the communities that we're working with.
38:55
And I think that this applies for both. Sorry, both for the Global
38:59
south as well as the U.S. yes, both ways that's fascinating.
39:02
Well, thank you so much Maya. This has been a wealth of wisdom.
39:07
There's so many other questions I may have, but I mean,
39:10
but I think that they merit its own podcast. I was thinking about issues of
39:15
NGOs and how they are like a double edged sword in the
39:19
Global south, but we'll put past that in for another
39:23
podcast. Thank you so much to being with us today
39:27
and I wish you best. Thank you so much Federico.
39:31
This has been a wonderful opportunity. Bye bye.
39:37
Thank you for listening to Dive. I hope
39:40
you learned from this episode as much as I did. Please help us to
39:44
spread the word about the show. See you next time.