Oct. 7, 2008 issue
McNair Scholar devotes energy to children's struggles in Ireland

By Amy E. Whitesall

 

For Lisa Ghigliazza, working to help disadvantaged children began with a book —  "A Long Way Gone," Ishmael Beah's memoir of a child soldier in Sudan.

"I was already interested in working with children, but I had never thought about this population of children," said Ghigliazza, a senior honors student in Eastern Michigan's School of Social Work and one of the university's first McNair Scholars. "I'd thought about the struggles — abuse and neglect — children have here, but this brought a whole new dimension to the struggles children had to go through."

CHILDREN'S ADVOCATE: Lisa Ghigliazza, a senior honors student in EMU's School of Social Work, traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland, this summer. As a McNair Scholar, she studied the effect of war, conflict and displacement on children there.

Thanks to a McNair Summer Research Fellowship, Ghigliazza, 43, spent 10 weeks in Belfast, Northern Ireland, this summer, studying the effect of war, conflict and displacement on children and examining the social service systems put in place to help them.

The McNair program, named after Challenger astronaut Ronald McNair, helps prepare students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue doctorate degrees. The summer research fellowship included a $2,800 stipend and a $500 research grant. Eastern Michigan University launched its McNair program through the Honors College at the beginning of 2008. The school currently has about 30 McNair scholars, says Betty Brown-Chappell, an EMU social work professor and McNair program director.

"Lisa's maturity sets her apart," said Brown-Chappell, who's also Ghigliazza's mentor. "They're all exceptional students, but Lisa comes to it with an air of confidence and a can-do spirit, and that makes it such a pleasure to be her mentor...Working with Lisa, as with the other honors students, has reinvigorated and enriched my own professional life. That's the payoff."

A very nontraditional student, Ghigliazza finished one semester at Wayne State University before enlisting in the U.S. Army — a path that led to Army Intelligence work with the National Security Agency.

But when she left the Army, she and her husband came home to Michigan to raise their two kids. Her 20-year-old daughter is now a student at Case Western Reserve; her son a freshman at Monroe Community College. Administrative assistant jobs paid the bills, but Ghigliazza knew she wanted something more.

In January 2005, a single mother working full-time and attending school part-time, Ghigliazza was hit head-on by another driver on the first night of winter classes. She spent nine months recovering from a traumatic brain injury. Ghigliazza lost her job, but found a new path.

"That was the big, huge reason for the career change," she said. "Because of how things happened, I was only able to do one thing at a time — work full-time or go to school full-time. I decided to focus my energies on school. And, sometime between the accident and re-entering school, I read that book."

"A Long Way Gone" sharpened her focus on helping children hurt by conflict.

In Belfast, Ghigliazza learned that, in the early years of the conflict, psychologists there expected children would suffer long-term effects. Later, as they started seeing post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and phobias, they developed therapy programs. But it was too late for many children, and suspicion and fear of the government kept large segments of society from using the programs at all.

Ghigliazza thought she knew a lot about the conflict in Northern Ireland going into the project.  

But the things she learned — talking with people who'd lived through the violence, reading firsthand accounts and analysis, and physically being there — helped her understand how much more there was to know.

"One of the most striking things is they have these 'peace walls', giant walls dividing communities," Ghigliazza said. "If you think of the Berlin Wall, they're all over Northern Ireland."

The walls are named for the 1998 peace agreement that ended the violence between Catholics and Protestants, but they're far from being beacons of peace themselves.

They divide society, Catholic on one side, Protestant on the other, often painted with murals that remind residents of bombings and police brutality. Ghigliazza recalls a news interview with a young boy playing near one of the walls. He was asked if he ever visited his neighbors on the other side of the wall.

"Why should I? They're Protestant," he answered.

"I didn't understand how deep the wounds went and how people could carry that on to future generations," Ghigliazza said. "I didn't realize how young children are indoctrinated into a culture of hate. That was profound. It can be very dangerous when they're given the wrong information."

To Ghigliazza, it drove home the importance of understanding the culture of whatever population you're working with as a social worker — whether in Northern Ireland, Sudan, or any other corner of the world.

"This, to me, is a precursor to the master's and doctoral work I want to do in Sudan," she said. "I want to be able to understand that conflict and develop therapeutic care for children. There's a lot that goes into that and what works here won't work in Africa. And what works in Africa won't work in Northern Ireland. You have to be culturally sensitive."