Taylor Leigh Gombar spent the summer in China on one semester of Mandarin. “Not enough to get me through,” she says, “but I learned as I went.” Gombar’s got guts: she joined a cohort of nearly twenty strangers to study abroad at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
In 2013, the Vira I. Heinz Program for Women in Global Leadership selected Gombar for a scholarship to study abroad – a gift she says made it possible for her to travel. “They needed a strong woman to develop abroad,” she says. “It was a privilege.” With her interest in economic opportunity, Gombar selected China, focusing on the juxtaposition of growing industry with growing concern over working conditions. “The best way to examine economic opportunity is through residential investigation,” she says. “So you look at the housing – housing is a key determinant of how people are living – social status, etc.” Working closely with a professor, she studied the contrast between life in rural areas and the inner city. “It’s really funny, because China is starting to replicate worldwide monuments, so they have their own Eiffel Tower… and they have a town that looks exactly like Oklahoma. But then we also walked through inner city slums where people were using one communal bathroom that was never washed. They were washing their dishes outside their house. What we found is that the people that are living in the inner city slums are actually at a higher ranking in their social status than those living in the rural countryside because they [in the rural countryside] don’t have access to markets or foods or jobs.” The contrast between poverty and affluence strongly affected Gombar. But as her understanding of the complexity of China’s social structure increased, her thoughts on how to have a lasting impact took a new form. “You should change this: that is the automatic American response,” she says. “And I think I have a filter over that because I’ve been in their country…. It helps you to see that, yes, there’s a problem, but maybe education is the best way to get their own citizens to change their lifestyle, because Americans can’t always impose their values on others.”
Now that Gombar’s back in the United States, she’s taking her commitment to education seriously. On Thursday, January 30, Gombar is teaming up with fellow student Emily Schmidt for SQUATified … with World Sanitation?, a squat fitness class dedicated to going where most discussions won’t. “One thing that people don’t know and shocked me abroad is that sanitation – such a private topic – is not spoken of, but it’s expected. It has its own standards.” In some of Gombar’s destinations, the only options were “squatty potties”: “It’s a hole in the floor with this handle that raises out of the floor, and that’s it,” she says. “You drop your pants, and you squat. And they don’t have any soap, they don’t have any running water after, and they definitely don’t have any paper products.” The squat fitness class Gombar’s co-hosting features three fifteen-minute presentations on global sanitation topics that she hopes will get Chatham students thinking. While she brings lessons from China, her co-host Emily Schmidt provides a European perspective. “She’s a big factor in putting this together, because she has helped me all the way through this project,” she says. “And she’s taking her own lessons from whatever she learned in Italy, and she’s going to incorporate them into this interactive fitness class, too.”
Their goal is to support the philosophy of “thinking globally, acting locally”. For their event, Gombar and Schmidt couple serious discussion with meaningful action: they’re requesting sanitary product donations for Pittsburgh-based Light of Life Rescue Mission. “There are a lot of people in our own community that don’t have access to these things we’re talking about,” says Gombar. “So we felt we could help whoever that is, whether that’s homeless or low-income families, and we could provide these things.” Once the AFC Gym lights go out and the students journey home after a challenging workout and a powerful conversation, how can the good work continue? “I’m just going to say that, with my new philosophy and what I’ve learned abroad, you should never impose your own values on someone else, you should try to encourage them.” For Gombar, that means talking: stirring up discussion on topics few address, global sanitation included. “Because yes, it’s private, but it can be public.”
SQUATified … with World Sanitation? is Thursday, January 30 from 7pm to 9pm in the AFC Gym. Find more information on the Facebook event page.