Totally forgot to post this a while back (obviously my life has gotten too busy--I love it). During the school holiday I co-directed a youth leadership camp with three other pcvs, some of my best friends in country. We called it Camp LION, Leaders in our nation, and it was designed to do some of the things we all felt were missing in many peace corps camps. If anyone remembers, one of my most successful and enjoyable moments early in my service was attending a leadership camp for boys (BUILD). Well I attended a couple of these and as much as I loved them, I did not feel like they really encouraged leadership. Coming off my empowerment conference, I was eager to introduce some of those elements into a camp, whereby the young people had a chance to gain actual hard skills in leadership, experiment with leadership values, and experience something transformative. Even though none of my friends had been to the conference, those were exactly the things they wanted to see in a camp as well.
We decided the first major change was going to have both girls and boys attend the camp and work in groups together. Rather than focus on what each sex can do to be leaders on their own, we wanted them to learn how to work together and see each other as peers and equals in leadership and change. previous camps where they were separate would come together for a day and work on gender equality. Well since we were working on that the entire week, we had a day free to fill in our schedule--incoming transformative experience! We thought about what a good leader should experience in order to be a positive change agent and we settled on having a Volunteer day where the youth went out in groups to do community service work. They went to orphanages, a hospital, and did street cleaning and tree planting. All together, they did a ton of very meaningful work and it was very obvious from that day's reflection that they did in fact feel transformed. Giving back to the community and feeling like you made a difference in another person's life does so much for a growing young adult who is looking for validation and meaning in their life. We were so proud of them. Another major change was that rather than teaching lessons heavy in content on things like HIV, we led sessions that gave the youth skills in taking information back to their communities. How to talk in public, how to set goals, how to encourage their peers to use family planning, and how to counsel people with HIV; the goal being the campers felt capable of not only making behavior change in themselves, but in their communities. In the end they had to create an elevator pitch on a project they would do back in their school based on what they learned, and we saw some incredible ideas.
Camp LION was easily the most successful thing I have ever done. There was so much that I did not include here that led to an extremely positive week for everyone. All of us as co-directors worked wonderfully together and really kept camp tight. Ugandan co-workers were treated as equals and peers in the work, not just people to invite because we had to (something that unfortunately somehow happened in most previous camps.) We had counselors-in-training who were previous campers and now are very able and ready to become counselors in the next camp. We even had a proposal!!! (Shout out to Jim and Julia <3). I really got a lot of practice in empowerment models and learned a lot about planning an event like volunteer day. We all were able to remove our egos from camp and rely on one another to let the right things happen. If I did nothing else my service, I am so very proud of our camp. And we keep getting emails from campers about all the great work they are continuing to do in their communities after being at camp!
No comments:
Post a Comment