The beginnings...

This is the beginning of what I hope will be a great adventure and an interesting post for all of you who are kind enough to read it. We are leaving for Bogota in less than two weeks, where I will throw myself into intensive Spanish classes for 10 weeks before starting my interviews with girls and young women from poor neighbourhoods and IDP camps in and around Bogota. For those of you who don't know, I am doing research on girls and gang violence in Bogota, Colombia - I am exploring issues of gender roles and gang violence and looking at how girls play many different roles in gangs that are largely unseen and/or ignored.

Please feel free to send messages and/or comments to me as this process gets rolling. I think this will be an enormous learning experience for me and I know I will need all the criticism, feedback, and/or ideas that I can get!

Stay tuned...