GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp

Last week, I led what is, in Guatemala (or at least in my small communities) a very strange activity - an overnight camp. Only girls from one middle school were invited and it was only one night, but even so many parents were reluctant to let their daughters out of their house and supervision for a whole 24 hours. Fortunately my school director convinced at least some of the parents that this would be a great and beneficial activity for the girls, and so a grand total of 20 girls (out of about 40 total female students at the school) showed up to the camp, which really ended up being a perfect number of participants since I was leading the camp by myself. The theme of the camp was leadership and self-esteem, so we did several activities related to that, and I also threw in some sex ed/abstinence activities, a debate about women having careers versus focusing on child-rearing, some guest speakers, and a zumba session, as well as several tried-and-true camp games like red light/green light and the human knot.

The school director did an awesome job of helping me prepare for the camp and was clearly really excited about it -
 this is a "map" of the school with the six different classrooms dedicated to different activities - the "dorm", the game
 room, the "nurse's office", the TV/music room, the cafeteria, and the classroom.

The director and teachers brought medicines and emergency
medical supplies, as well as some small books for the girls to read
during breaks (which they actually read, to my surprise)

The teachers also made a volleyball net and soccer goals out of PCV pipes

The human knot

"My personal flag" - girls depict something they want to improve about themselves, what animal they would be, the
person they most admire, what they like most about their country or culture, their biggest dream or aspiration, and
 what is most important to them.

Another self-esteem activity in which the girls write positive things about each other
on papers taped to their backs. Unfortunately some of the girls took advantage of the
anonymity of the activity to write things like "yells at people a lot" or "boyfriend stealer",
which totally surprised me as they had all been super-sweet throughout the whole camp!

This girl is "beautiful, good, intelligent, and fun".

The sleeping room/cinema - the "movie screen" also served to block
 out 15-year-old boys who tried to peek in the room at 11 at night

All-in-all, the camp was pretty successful. Of course, the girls were screaming and laughing until about midnight and promptly woke up at 5:30 in the morning despite having slept on a hard classroom floor, but both they and the parents keep asking me when we can have another camp.

The school's graduation was a few days after the camp - this is me with the graduating 9th-grade class