Last week we gathered girls that were as young
as 10 up to 15 years old to come together, become friends, and learn a little
more about what it means to be leaders in their communities. The camp is called
GLOW camp which means Girls Leading Our World. It is important to know that
Ghana is still in the true meaning of the term a developing country but honestly
it is much more developed then I thought it would be before arriving here for
my 2 years. With the new age internet
cell phones and texting it seems like we are in America. I think that it is
even more important to educate young girls in this development stage because
they can see women that have already made it to important powerful jobs. There
are many role models for these girls to look up to but it is still a struggle
for most of them to finish education up to the senior secondary school (high
school). There are countless obstacles that they face day to day. Most families
do some sort of farming which somehow seems to always interfere with exams and
studying for the end term. Along with
pressure from the family to help around the house and farm it is social
pressures from the community that tell the girls that they won’t make it and t
just stay at home, then there are the boys that only encourage the communities
perspective and try to take advantage of stressed out confused young
ladies.
In
our communities was having a unique opportunity to get to know young girls that
have that extra something special. These girls already have it in their mind
that they are going to do and be something great and are optimistic to make it
happen. So we bring these girls together
for three full days of leadership, education, and fun activities. We brought in
speakers to talk to the girls about women leaders in Ghana, a nurse to speak on
feminine care and family planning, and an inspirational woman that works for Peace
Corps to share personal stories, the struggles and the triumphs. The PCVs that were involved also lead sessions
on HIV/AIDS awareness, education, and stigma reduction. A session was also
dedicated to malaria prevention where we showed the girls how to use bed nets
properly and taught facts about the disease.
My
favorite parts of the camp were when we were filling time or doing craft
activities. The young leaders learned how to tie-dye, which in my eyes is a
very important leadership quality. They also learned how to make “gods eyes”
the yarn and stick craft, and they absolutely loved making water sachet coin
purses. For a more educational craft project we taught them how to track their
period and fertility on bracelets made from different colored beads. It might not be a craft activity but we did
some science experiments with the girls including the baking soda balloon
experiment and telling if a egg is hard boiled or not and a talk on robots. It
was important to show the girls that science can be fun and applicable. Many of
the girls that came to the camp are in the focus of home economics in school
(its kinda like a major but in high school) so even getting a little bit more
interest in the sciences could really help them in school.
You
might have seen on my facebook page photos of people falling onto other people.
This was our attempt at teaching the trust fall concept. We wanted to get a
feeling of trust throughout the girls on the first day to carry throughout the
camp so we started with the partner trust fall and once the girls got the
concept we moved on to the scary chair trust fall. This was definitely more
difficult for the girls to do. The trust was not there at first. They kept
sticking their butts down first and trying to sit on the girls catching. The
concept of keeping strait the whole time and arms by your side was hard to
grasp so a PCV had to show them a couple times and they started to get it. Along with the theme of trust we also wanted
to incorporate teamwork. The perfect
game for that is the human knot. It is only possible to untie the knot if
everybody works together because everybody has a different perspective on the
knot it’s difficult to have only one person doing all the action and by working
together you can see their personalities coming out and taking shape.
I really think that this camp went well. We
had a couple of break throughs with the girls that warmed our hearts as well as
made us want to help even more. The girls really became friends throughout the
groups and not just in their school groups which hopefully they learned a
little something from each other. We had three deaf girls come from Tema with a
Volunteer that teaches them art and learned so much from them. Not only did
they teach us a little sign language but how to interact with each other on
another level. These girls were so animated with their facial expressions that
you knew exactly what they were thinking.
I think a great moment for all the volunteers there was when they
received a prize at the end for remembering the volunteers name signs not only
did she remember our signs from the first day but she was so so happy to get a
cool prize and the smile on her face was the most beautiful smile.
Even
though I think we were all happy that the stress of planning and putting on
this camp was over at the end we all had a blast and made some great
memories. Already we have to start
thinking of ways to make next year better and keep all the good stuff. It will
be a tough one to top but hey we are the eastern region we can definitely do
it!
