The power of personal experience

In my scholarship application to my graduate program at HKS, a particular question had bothered me a lot: 'Explain any other special circumstances that you feel should be considered with your application, eg. If you faced difficult challenges, such as being orphaned, or other disadvantageous conditions'.  I was confused: why ask this question to applicants? Should I write my personal story? How does my personal experience matter to my professional application? As it turns out, it does.

I visited HOYMAS, an NGO  that was formed by male sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS in 2009. It serves both sex workers and the LGBTQ community with practical knowledge on safe sex, preventive materials distribution, general information and also economic empowerment. 

The founder, John Mathange is himself a gay sex worker who got diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. This led him to start HOYMAS, an organization that hopes to reach the disadvantaged homosexual sex worker community, ostracized on two counts - for being homosexual and for working as sex workers. African gay men have ten times higher HIV rates than others, driven by homophobia that leads to violence, lack of access to condoms  and hence safe sex and continuous demands for bribes by both the police and the religious community.

As he spoke, I realized how important his personal experience is, to his work. If I were asked to recommend any policy measures for the community, how could I even hope to understand his context and life to make any sort of recommendations? I understood why personal experiences matter so much: only a gender-based-violence survivor can truly talk about what it is to live as a survivor and the daily fear and shame revolving around the cultural context of the issue, only a person living with HIV/AIDS can talk about the deeper issues of condom use, only a refugee can truly talk about the pain and suffering and practical challenges of living as a refugee. Others may claim to feel the pain, but it is experience that shapes powerful narratives to one's life.  

And yet, organizations around the world underestimate the power of experience. Would a UNAIDS be willing to actively recruit a person living with HIV/AIDS to represent the community it claims to serve? Would an organization working with farmers be willing to have them actively participating in the decision making process? All too often, we see the elites of the world pressing down solutions to the rest of the population, only widening the measure of inequality in the world. We see prestigious institutes recommending health policies about community health centers in rural villages in India without the scholars ever having set foot inside one in their lives. Is it a surprise then that policies so often fail? 

Talking to the community at HOYMAS was a powerful experience for me. I learnt about the high rates of violence against women sex workers especially, and how certain philanthropic lawyers were helping survivors get access to legal aid.  I learnt of how gay men used 'cover wives' to escape the societal oppression, transmitting the HIV virus to more women in the process. I learnt how the rest of the neighborhood that was once violently opposed to the idea of having an NGO working with sex workers located in their vicinity, today uses the same community clinic to access their everyday medicines. I learnt how, by mere interaction, one could see humans as, well, just humans. And not by one particular identity they carry. 

The experience also taught me to respect my own personal story and acknowledge the effect it has on my professional being. I came out reminding myself of the necessity to be humble and appreciate the power of personal experience; it can bring in true ground-level insights that nothing else in the world ever can.