Our First Weeklong Summer Camp for Girls!

Farah, Luisa, and I all worked together to put on a series of camps for girls in the 5th and 6th grades. GLOW stand for Girls Leading Our World, but the significance doesn't translate in Spanish so we changed the name to señoritas brillantes (bright ladies). First was our camp in an aldea (village) of Luisa's site, San Ramon, next will be camp in my town in December, and then in Farah's site in December. 

Our poster outside of the school

After that first week of camp I am so glad that we have almost a whole month to prepare for the next one. Even though the camp was only four days in the mornings from 8:30-12:30 we finished every day exhausted. There were about 60 girls that came to camp each day. Our camp was based on building leadership and self-esteem in the girls. There is very little hands on learning in Guatemala and students are rarely asked what they think - the focus is on copying down information. So while we did teach them about some very important topics in each one we made sure to make it participatory, asking girls to share their opinions and to present to the class whenever possible, working on their public speaking and confidence.

A trust/team building game. The girl in the back was the only one not
blindfolded and she led her train around an obstacle course via a series
of pre-determined non-verbal signals.

 Some of the topics that we covered were: communication: symptoms of a healthy & unhealthy relationships, self-esteem, leadership, family planning, menstruation, hygiene/fecal-oral contamination, HIV/AIDS, exercise, and of course lots and lots of dinamicas/ice breakers. Some of these topics might seem too advanced for this age of girls, but for some of them this might be the first and only opportunity they have to learn these things. Each of these activities only had about an hour to an hour and a half, but we at least began to introduce the topics many of which the girls had never learned about before. For example there were some girls in their teens who did not know anything about menstrual cycle or how that is related to them being able to have children.

Teaching the basics of HIV/AIDS.

This activity (SIDA o NODA) works out really well because it uses a play on words. In Spanish AIDS is SIDA (síndrome de inmunodeficiencia adquirida) and the verb "dar" means to give. This activity is call SIDA o NODA which is basically SIDA(AIDS or yes it gives (you HIV)) or NODA (no it doesn't give (you HIV)) - and there are pictures of things that either can or cannot transmit HIV (i.e. sharing a toothbrush (noda) or getting a tattoo (sida - of course this will not always transmit HIV, but it is possible). Each small group of girls got two pictures and it was their job to put them into one of the two categories and then explain to the class why they thought it belonged there.

Decorating notebooks

Nametags. The different colors of yarn differentiated the three groups of girls

I took a portrait of every girl in the camp and we printed it out to 

give to each of them along with their diplomas on the last day. 

Taking a picture of a Guatemalan is like taking a picture of someone from the 1900s where they can't smile because the exposure time is too long. Guatemalans do not naturally smile for photos. So I would take a picture of each girl and she would give me a blank stone face and then I would coerce her into smiling. See for yourself. This happened every single time, but here are a couple examples.

 

Trying to get her to smile for her picture

The whole group

Planning all of this was a ton of work, but it was really rewarding in the end and I am so glad that we did it and that we did it together. Next up: my town!

The girls with their diplomas!