It’s strange that I have now been here long enough to be participating in things that happened last year around this same time. Alas, it is true. For example, I am participating in my 2nd Roedean and Phedisang Working Together Event…as if Camp GLOW wasn’t amazing, hectic, and crazy busy enough? Just a few days after I got back, I started frantically planning for the girls from Roedean to come to our community to visit. I don’t know if you remember me writing about their visit last year (eish, a year ago already?) but it was an amazing week (check out the blog I created for them last year on the right). Roedean is a private school in Johannesburg and girls in Grade 11 have the opportunity to apply to participate in a social awareness project where they help in a rural community for a week.
This year, we have a packed schedule and I am very much looking forward to meeting a new group of seventeen young girls. They will be visiting our centers to meet and play with the children, going to the primary school to present a drama, planting trees and doing a community clean-up project, and also participating in a celebratory Women’s Day march in the community! I look forward to writing about their visit so keep checking back...
And speaking of 2nd times, as I was walking home from a fundraising event today, I was stopped by one of my friends asking if I was registered to run in this year Mayor’s Marathon (it’s not really a marathon – it’s just the name of the event). I happily replied that I would be running. I ran last year, didn’t I? So many “2nds”? I’ve been here a long time…
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Camp GLOW...Continued.
I’ll give the writing part a try now. I just needed some time to process. Okay, Camp GLOW.
Through our spectacular friends and families contributions (another volunteer and I did the fundraising for the camp), we were able to invite 30 girls (ages 13-18) along with 8 counselors on a 6 day adventure, leadership and girls empowerment camp teaching about healthy relationships, self-esteem, sexual health and reproduction and HIV/AIDS (which continues to devastate communities here in South Africa). After separating the girls into cabins (the purple, pink, blue and green cabins which were fantastically led by four Peace Corps Volunteer counselors) we had the girls play games, learn camp songs, write in journals, swim in the river, hike in the mountains, perform in a talent show, sign each other’s GLOW GIRLS ROCK T-shirts, dance, do some yoga (!), learn how to kickbox, make smores, and say goodbye to the things they were told they couldn’t do in an “I can’t” funeral around the campfire. And these were just some of the activities we did! It was a crazy, awesome, challenging, inspiring, fantastic week. One that I will never forget.
For most of these girls it was the first time they had left home for any reason other than a family gathering in a nearby village. They were exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking, new friends and opened up in ways I never imagined. Their bravery and honesty was inspiring. When my fellow Peace Corps volunteer and I started planning this camp, we had high hopes that it might make a small difference in changing these young girls behavior. But I believe we did more – at least I hope we did. During my first year in South Africa, I was talking to a young girl about circumstances and the idea that sometimes you aren’t given a choice in your life. If you live in a village or a city. If you have two loving parents or you live alone and have no parents. If you are poor or rich. The girls that attended camp didn’t choose their circumstances. But they have the ability to make choices that could change the course of their future. Most of them had never been told this before...and that’s what I hope we did during this camp.
Who knows?! We may even have sparked a change big enough that now we will see a future president among these girls? Anything is possible. The choice is all theirs…
Through our spectacular friends and families contributions (another volunteer and I did the fundraising for the camp), we were able to invite 30 girls (ages 13-18) along with 8 counselors on a 6 day adventure, leadership and girls empowerment camp teaching about healthy relationships, self-esteem, sexual health and reproduction and HIV/AIDS (which continues to devastate communities here in South Africa). After separating the girls into cabins (the purple, pink, blue and green cabins which were fantastically led by four Peace Corps Volunteer counselors) we had the girls play games, learn camp songs, write in journals, swim in the river, hike in the mountains, perform in a talent show, sign each other’s GLOW GIRLS ROCK T-shirts, dance, do some yoga (!), learn how to kickbox, make smores, and say goodbye to the things they were told they couldn’t do in an “I can’t” funeral around the campfire. And these were just some of the activities we did! It was a crazy, awesome, challenging, inspiring, fantastic week. One that I will never forget.
For most of these girls it was the first time they had left home for any reason other than a family gathering in a nearby village. They were exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking, new friends and opened up in ways I never imagined. Their bravery and honesty was inspiring. When my fellow Peace Corps volunteer and I started planning this camp, we had high hopes that it might make a small difference in changing these young girls behavior. But I believe we did more – at least I hope we did. During my first year in South Africa, I was talking to a young girl about circumstances and the idea that sometimes you aren’t given a choice in your life. If you live in a village or a city. If you have two loving parents or you live alone and have no parents. If you are poor or rich. The girls that attended camp didn’t choose their circumstances. But they have the ability to make choices that could change the course of their future. Most of them had never been told this before...and that’s what I hope we did during this camp.
Who knows?! We may even have sparked a change big enough that now we will see a future president among these girls? Anything is possible. The choice is all theirs…
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Camp GLOW.
You know those moments in your life that are so special that you don’t know how to describe them to other people? It’s like they are too good for words?
For me, being at this camp last week is one of those times. It was truly an amazing week. I’m not quite ready to write about it yet because I don't know how to translate it into words but wanted to share a few pictures (visit my photo album over there to the right). I wish you all could have been there/here. It was amazing...have I already said that? See? I told you I need to wait to do the writing part.
For me, being at this camp last week is one of those times. It was truly an amazing week. I’m not quite ready to write about it yet because I don't know how to translate it into words but wanted to share a few pictures (visit my photo album over there to the right). I wish you all could have been there/here. It was amazing...have I already said that? See? I told you I need to wait to do the writing part.
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| GLOW GIRLS ROCK! |
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