In the summer of 2007 I went on a missions trip with my church youth group to San Lucas, Honduras. While we were on this trip we worked closely with the children of our sister-church. We played soccer with them and taught them English while they taught us Spanish. One of the biggest aspects of the trip was rebuilding a kitchen within the church. we had to tear out the cement floor and lay new cement. A lot of the teenage boys within the San Lucas community thought that they should help us remove the cement. We got into a group and tried to figure out a strategy. We decided that the boys in the group would break the cement with the tools and the girls would carry the pieces over to the pile. The Honduran boys decided to join in after we decided this and would break the cement and then carry the pieces themselves. This messed up our process because people were going through the one door over and over again. There was not really space for people to enter and exit repeatedly, which is why we came up with the system. As a group, we came up with this simple way that the goal was going to be accomplished. This defines our team's culture because we came up with norms and roles that each person would fulfill.
So What?
As a group, we collectively decided that this process was messed up because of the Trait Approach. We assumed that because they were not apart of our youth group, they acted as they pleased. They came up with new ways of doing what they wanted to do. As a culture, they do not value teamwork as much as my group did. They have different values, skills, and personalities. These boys thought that by doing the task individually with everyone contributing the same amount, they would be successful and efficient. We didn't want to say anything to the boys because negative comments often cause misperceptions and interpersonal problems within the group. Some people within my group formed social perceptions about the boys. They assumed that because they wanted to be independent and work alone, they are always stand-offish and like that. They formed stereotypes by categorizing the boys.
In order to fully understand how we were going to operate as a team, these Honduran boys would have had to ask us. They were most likely worried that their English would not be good enough for us to understand what they were asking us. This was another assumption that was commonly made.
Now What?
Returning from the trip, we realized how hard it is to truly be the minority. I think that as a group of mainly Caucasian, Episcopalian people we just have never been in the position in which we were the minority. It's hard to have true diversity within a group and avoid assumptions from being made. A lot of times when we're in school, we make the first impression error by basing our judgments on the first impression we get of people in the group. For example, if I was ever in a group for a project in high school and I had heard that someone in my group was lazy and didn't perform well in the last group he/she was in, I would automatically assume that they would not contribute to my group.
Going on this trip taught us a lot as a group. It taught us not to take life for granted after seeing the living conditions within the city. In San Lucas, the typical family has seven children and live in a one to two bedroom home. Their homes were usually made out of cardboard boxes, at least in the area that we were in. We also learned so much about ourselves. We were placed in an area in which English was not the first language spoken by any means. We had to learn to adapt and not disrupt the culture where we were.
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