GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp

After months of organizing and changing dates, we finally had 55 girls (age range 14 to 18) come from Sagay National High School and two rural extension schools for our “Girls Leading Our World” A.K.A. “Negros GLOWs” Camp. GLOW turned out to be even better than I had expected! We divided the girls into 5 colored teams of around 12 girls, red, orange, yellow, green, and purple, with a PCV leading each team and sleeping with their team in the classrooms. “Roughing it” is putting it lightly regarding living in these classrooms with buckets for 4 days, but we will get to that later. I was in charge of the purple group! Purple power…primo of course. I bonded with them like crazy, and no matter how hard the sleeping situation was for me (mosquitos, hot, fan air stealing away sheet, hard floor, no pillow, mushed cultural sweaty cuddling, phones constantly going off, girl talk girl talk girl talk) it made the camp so much more intimate and wonderful, and I wouldn’t even have changed it if I could...well, I might have added a pillow. We planned an introduction presentation for the girls at our Opening Ceremony once they arrived, where we included pictures of us 5 Peace Corps girl facilitators, and a funny rap for each of us. It ended with a short choreographed dance to N’SYNC’s here we go, changed to here we GLOWWW. It was all highly embarrassing… and indeed caught on video… but I will never allow you to see it! We did some teambuilding classics on the first night, like human knot and Capitan with our colored teams, we also made beaded bracelets. Ahead of time, Hillary and I prepared buckets of supplies for each team. Each team only had one color of beads, so we had everyone exchange their beads with girls from other teams and have to share a fun fact about herself. By the end, everyone had multicolored cute bracelets and were bonded with new friends already! We also made an affirmation wall; we called the Glow Bright Wall. We cut out a shape for every girl and ourselves and placed it on the wall, we told the girls throughout the weekend to write something that you like about a person on their shape. Before the first night was over, the shapes were filling up! They had to use the backs as well by the end. They loved it. We thought that some pieces might not have as many comments, so we would add more of our own, but that turned out to not even be an issue!

Affirmation GLOW BRIGHT WALL

Our intro video, with my mommas lovely submission

Our Digs!

GLOW mixed new friendship bracelets

Us Kooky Facilitators

Friday kicked off with some camp logistics and went right into our first topic, leadership. Girls learned about good qualities of a leader, talked about the qualities of female leaders in our life who we admire, and we had a few fun activities outdoors. We then had my session on gender stereotypes, a topic that was very new to the girls. We talked about gender roles in the Philippines and had the girls talk about sticky situations considering these gender stereotypes. Many focusing on how women are expected to be submissive, please their husbands before their needs, and make nothing more of themselves than a housewife in the Philippines. Cathy actually gave me advice to talk about another disgusting truth that happens in high schools here. Male teachers forcing students to give oral sex in exchange for passing the class to be able to graduate. Not okay. After all of the serious stuff, we each made Wordles, with positive words that we think describe us. The girls were all so creative, and they loved doing this, I was quite impressed. After hours of sessions we had a movie night. They all gathered in the canteen and watched Hunger Games on the projector. All the PCVs got a kick out of their collective screams and giggles during the more romantic moments…so Filipina… 

Saturday opened with what turned out to be one of the more emotional sessions, self-esteem and body image. We looked at the unrealistic beauty ideals presented in the media worldwide. The girls really loved seeing pictures of Filipina celebrities in real life, wala sang (without) makeup, versus pictures of the same girls in magazines and ads looking al dolled up. We then talked about put downs and bullying, which is a hugeeeee problem in Filipino schools because of the big culture of joking and making fun of each other. The girls were so brave and open in sharing their, sometimes tearful, experiences with bullying and judgment. They then took time to think of everything they love about themselves and told each other about their good and unique qualities. This moved into our session on Healthy Relationships. The girls made cute cut out daisies, with each petal representing a positive quality of a friendship. Their favorite activity was writing a recipe for a healthy relationship or friendship. We had the most creative and mature responses, a recipe for Friendship Fillet and a baking recipe for love with instructions to 'clean out your heart-shaped bowl to make space for your new relationship'. Mine is in my last blog post…

My Session: Gender Stereotypes

WORDLES!

My Purple Power, working hard like usual!

Our last topic, the most sensitive, was Adolescent Health. We discussed issues such as STDs, HIV/AIDS, abstinence, and birth control methods. The girls told us that this was the first time they had any sort of session like this and they were very interested. Sex is extremely taboo here in the Philippines. It is joked about quite often but NEVER talked about seriously out in the open. This of course leads to sooooo much misinformation, for example, our pre-test showed around 80% of the girls thought you could get pregnant from oral sex. Another common misconception was that you could get AIDS from shaking hands…We took a risky but important move in passing around condoms just for them to look at, open, touch, not be afraid of, and give back. Two of the girls actually ran outside to throw up, and others were so entertained that they played with them, shoving their entire hands inside. Both of these signs showed none of them are ready to have sex of course... The reality is no one will talk about sex, but some of the girls are doing it…whether it is out of pressure, boredom, curiosity, rebelling, love, etc. They are not even safe once they get married because of so many cases of the father working overseas and bringing back STDs or HIV from sex workers abroad, and their wives are so confused on why they then get sick too. This is a big part of why AIDS is on the rise for the first time ever now in the Philippines. We maintained abstinence being the only 100% effective way of staying safe, but we gave them all of the accurate fact truths as well. We played a sort of hot potato game with the condoms to try to eliminate some of the fear, when the music stopped, they would have to answer a health-based question. On the feedback forms later, the girls wrote how they thought this was one of the most important and beneficial activities because they cannot talk about those issues anywhere else… and they have so many questions…because of the church saying one thing and books, doctors, science, etc. saying another. The Roman Catholic Church has such a stronghold here, and I have actually witnessed boldfaced lies being told to the people, saying, “if you use condoms, you will get cancer.” No kidding, I heard this myself in the church for a thanksgiving mass when I was with all of my students around graduation time…With overpopulation being one of the major problems bringing down the Philippines, the truth really needs to get out. People will then make their own choices, like they always do, but they will have the right facts. Mind you, we also had all of these activities and sessions approved by the high school principal, teachers, and parents signed an approval slip, so we were doing nothing in secret or too devious...just essential…

It was exhausting having activities from 8AM to 10PM every day, but the girls were all about it and wanted more more more, they never seemed tired. One of my purple girls chatted with me about how she liked this camp so much because of the topics and because it was the first well-organized camp she had ever been to, where everything ran smoothly. I am glad we were able to give that illusion! Haha, nah, everything did run fairly smoothly, besides the rain and running out of agua, but we did run on “American Time” not “Filipino Time,” which is an hour later than scheduled to start…this is really a thing that Filipinos talk about, but it was great to hear the girls’ positive response to our format. We slept in the classrooms by teams. Everyone just slept on sheets on the floor…pretty standard here... probably appalling by American standards… A couple of nights we ran out of water, which was rather unpleasant, but the girls were not too phased, Filipino minded, “bahala na”! “It’s up to God” or “Whatever.” We had planned an “I can’t” funeral, where we would make a bonfire and have each of the girls write down on a piece of paper something they have been told they can’t due, whether it be because they are a girl, they aren’t smart enough, strong enough, anything, then we would all crumple up the paper and symbolically thrown them into the fire and then eat smores. Typhoon season rained on that parade, but we had some dry mallow smores nevertheless which the girls were amused. Hey girls! Smores are not weird compared to your snack of a duck fetus = balut! On the last night, after our outside bonfire ritual had been typhooned out, as we worried about filling the time, our Filipina counterparts stepped up and took the lead on planning a variety/talent show... and the girls loved it! Each team presented a short skit or cheer that incorporated what they had learned so far. They were all so creative and enthusiastic, we were blown away. And despite not being able to roast the marshmallows, the girls still loved learning how to make s'mores and enjoying their chocolate-y goodness. Sunday closed out with a few fun activities including time for the girls to brainstorm how they will apply the knowledge they learned over the weekend to their community. They were all eager to be student leaders/mentors and groups even came up with specific activities that could be great projects in the future. We created a Facebook page for the girls to keep in touch with each other and share ideas on future activities.  

TEAM PURPLE

Cadiz University Girls and I

My Sweets

A few of the girls were brave enough to share very emotional stories from their past, many involving emotional and physical abuse, but most ended with how it has made them stronger... it was intense. The pre-test/post-test showed an AVERAGE of 5 out of 20 point increase from the camp. We thought this was great considering the camp was entirely done in English. They speak Illongo there, a different language, it is amazing that only hours away from me is yet another language entirely, and it was a little frustrating just now being comfortable in Visayan with my own students in Dauin, but not be able to talk to these girls in their local language. Oh Philippines. Their English skills were mostly excellent but some varied, and we really want the information to spread to everyone who needs it.

The only real frustration was lack of Filipina counter parts, but that might have been a blessing in disguise because since the other teachers bailed, a group of 4 college students were able to come step in, who absolutely loved the camp and helped out by somewhat acting as co-facilitators and translators of difficult subjects. Some of the girls were more comfortable talking with them, which was great, because they are easier to identify with than us foreigners, as much as we tried. The college women are actually now planning their own GLOW Camp for the females on their campus. So exciting!!! Every girl was in tears on our last day, and a few girls spoke up about what the camp meant to them and how important, knowledgeable, and powerful they now feel, which really was our goal. Sobby goodbyes and forget me not’s were exchanged, and I was completely exhausted and ready to collapse in my bed feeling very accomplished, with a lot of hard work paying off. Now, I can’t wait to begin planning my very own GLOW Camp with my students from Dauin for next summer. GIRL POWERRR!!! <3 NEGROS GLOWSSS!

Filipino students are the sweetest, all my special thank you notes from my team.

Negros GLOWs 2014