So a lot of you have seen my endless photos on Facebook the last few weeks and me going on and on about glow but you may have been wondering: what is glow!?!?
I'm here to explain all that glow was for me and share some of MY favorite moments with you all.
About a year ago camp glow was explained to me as a girls empowerment camp that peace corps volunteers hold worldwide. Glow stands for girls leading our world and this camp has been ran in Malawi for 10 years now.
Myself along with five other fantastic girls got the opportunity to plan glow from start to finish, starting in August of last year and just ending this past Sunday. All of the hard work certainly paid off after this week and I won't get into logistical details because frankly it's boring and most of it would be complaints :)
Here's the team:
the six of us were in charge of everything from lodging to transport to camper selection to making sure that the girls went to class and were safe and sound all week.
We invited 60 Malawian girls from secondary schools around the country and 6 girls that came to camp last yesto be "junior counselors" along with 6 wonderful Malawian women who coupled with 6 peace corps volunteers to be counselors for these girls!
The girls were taught so many things and although we tired them out daily (with activities from 6am-10pm) we could have went on and on in some with some of these topics!
We talked about natural beauty and confidence and trying to love who you are, along with natural ways to pamper ourselves and shying away from chemicals (skin lighteners and hair straitening chemicals)
We had an "I can't" funeral where each girl wrote down things people told them they couldn't do and threw them into a fire- which we then used for s'mores and camp songs :)
The girls learned about gender based violence, human rights, theater, writing and nutrition, reproductive systems and our bodies along with menstruation and hygiene and of course we did pad project! The girls also got a generous donation of pre-made pads in little bags that had panties and bags and washcloths and they basically went crazy!
We had plenty of craft time and journaling, we had a dance party and my favorite event: a talent show. Where the girls wrote poems, sang songs, did skits and expressed how much they learned at glow.
The girls went to the US embassy on a field trip, saw the parliament building, learned how to take a photo and played soccer while leaning about HIV!
We had a candle lighting ceremony where each girl got to express what their favorite part of camp was:
The girls got over 300 books donated to them to take home!They also learned the importance of sleeping under a bed net and ways to fix our nets in beautiful ways:
We had many lessons learned and many long classes but we also had a lot of fun!
There were so many great sessions at glow this year and the girls learned so much from health to nutrition to expressing themselves through art along with just making friends and learning that their problems are the same as someone that's living on the other side of the country.
We learned about peer education and club glow (taking lessons learned at camp back to village girls clubs) And out lf this came one of my favorite memories, from one of my favorite young campers (only 14) expressed how she wanted to start a youth club not in her secondary school but with primary school youth because "sometimes when they get to secondary school it's too late" and girls are pregnant or married or dropped out of school already. Here's Hellen: an inspiration and someone who will truly change Malawi
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