Saturday, August 21, 2010

Camp GLOW Ha'apai: in Retrospect

Well, this update is long overdue, and to be honest, I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to write. To start with, Camp GLOW was incredible! It was an amazing program and a wonderful, if exhausting, week, and I’m really proud that we were able to pull this off. The girls all loved the camp, and I think everyone involved learned a lot.

The week leading up to the actual camp was definitely the most stressful week I’ve had in the almost 2 years I’ve been in Tonga. Not everything was planned (in fact, most session weren’t), a key Tongan who we were really relying on bailed and hadn’t done anything she said she’d done for a few months, and about half of the campers dropped out for one reason or another. This being a new program, I think some parents were hesitant about allowing their daughters to join, leading to excuses like “my daughter is not allowed to attend because she has to stay home and do the cooking.” Yikes…

Anyways, working with another volunteer who is coordinating all the camps and her amazing counterpart, we were able to get almost everything into place, and we started the first ever Camp GLOW Ha’apai as scheduled, albeit an hour or so late given the “Tongan time” factor for everyone to arrive! We ended up with 15 campers: 13 girls in form 3 (9th grade) and 2 “youth” (girls who finished high school), 4 PCVs, and 4 Tongan ‘counselors’ as our core camp group. We were also lucky enough to have 4 amazing women with connections to the Wesleyan school we used who served as our caterers, and I really do owe them my life- without all their help, we never could have pulled anything off, or dealt with the occasional Wesleyan roadblocks we encountered during the week.

We started the week off focusing on goal setting and planning and motivation to achieve goals. This was a new concept to the girls and most of the counselors, and we spent a lot of time throughout the week revisiting and revising personal, professional, and educational goals and laying out the steps needed to attain them. We were lucky enough to have some amazing guest speakers come to our camp to run sessions. A really incredible woman from a bank here came and taught the girls about budgeting and savings, something that’s a real issue here, and the focus of the bank’s nation-wide educational initiative. We enlisted the help of a female lawyer, who taught the girls (and me!) about the rights women and children have under Tongan law and about different movements in the South Pacific to try and get countries like Tonga to agree the U.N.’s human rights laws.

We also had two women from incredible NGOs in Nuku’alofa: the Women and Children Crisis Center, which helps fight domestic violence and abuse, runs a safe house for battered and at risk women and children, lobby parliament, and run trainings, and Tonga Family Health Association, which does a lot of education and outreach on HIV/AIDS and sexual health, a pretty taboo topic here. These women ran sessions on Women’s Health, Sexual Health, and Sexual Harassment, all of which the girls had had little exposure to before the camp. We did all sorts of risqué stuff like touch condoms, talk about sex, and reinforce the idea that it’s not ok for men to sexually harass women. Writing that, I realized it doesn’t sound like a lot, but, especially for Ha’apai, this was pretty ground-breaking.

While the camp was happening, word spread though the NGO channels, and mid-week I got a call from the Tongan branch of the Salvation Army- they had heard about our program and offered to come and run a workshop of Drugs and Alcohol and Anger Management, both of which were wonderful! We also had the support of the local Police Domestic Violence Unit, which has a female officer in Ha’apai who came to meet with the girls, and various businesses, who hosted a few girls one morning to show them the career opportunities available to them here and provide examples of successful females in the workplace.

The camp was by no means all work, although we did spend quite a bit of time in the classroom. We also felt strongly about incorporating healthy lifestyle factors and creative expression into Camp GLOW, things that girls in Tonga really aren’t exposed to. Physically, we did some dancing and aerobics along with stretching/flexibility and relay races, and, a camp favorite, swimming at the wharf. We also did a lot of team building exercises, including trust falls (a bit scary, I’ll admit!) an afternoon with a parachute: a real crowd pleaser. On the arts and crafts end we made team posters to decorate our dormitory, tie-dyed t-shirts, and made a camp banner. It was really fun watching the girls get to use the art supplies we take for granted back home- they were all so excited and they looked awesome in their t-shirts.

For night activities we held a beach camp fire one night, which was a fun escape, watched “Mulan” in the dorm on a giant projector screen (sheet), had a “Club GLOW” dance party complete with strobe lights, and even had two of the girls dress up as pop stars and audition for “Digicel Star”, a Tongan knock-off of American Idol sponsored by a communication services company and being filmed by a fellow PCV!
To cap off the week, we had a program for family and friends where the girls performed skits and a dance, received awards and certificates, give speeches, and, of course, ate lots of food. It was really great watching the girls on the last day and seeing how special this experience was. Most of them didn’t want to leave and kept asking to stay one more night (something the extremely sleep deprived side of me wasn’t going to allow) and almost all of them begged to be allowed to come back next year as junior counselors. All in all, it was just incredible.

To be honest, as a pilot program, we ran into more than our fair share of obstacles and learned a lot from everything. But, this isn’t the time or place to get into that. Really, it only means the upcoming camps in other island groups and next year’s Camp GLOW Ha’apai will be even better! This camp and working with these girls was by far the most important thing I’ve done here, and has been such a phenomenal experience. The girls we were able to spend a week with really are the future leaders, and it was wonderful to watch them learn so much and grow of the course of just one week. Setting up a grass-roots program like this around Tonga really will change the future of this country. I know that sounds corny and cliché but I do think it’s true. The best way for developing countries to change their course is to invest in education, especially for girls, and seeing what 15 girls in Ha’apai are able to do if pushed, it makes me very optimistic.

I truly couldn’t have made Camp GLOW happen without help from all of you. To all of you who helped me work out details, listened to me vent/be crazy, spread the word about the camp, donated online, and understood when I made this a priority above other things, thank you. I can’t express how grateful I am for all the support I received, and how integral it was to the success of the program. In summation, Camp GLOW Ha’apai was a “glowing” success (I know, I couldn’t help myself) and an amazing experience!

1 comment:

  1. Hello there,

    I just stumbled upon your Blog while researching something on Tonga. I am a RPCV from Ha'apai 1996-1998. I just read your piece on Camp GLOW and thought your vision was wonderful. That is exactly what Tonga and Ha'apai need-true education on Life! Congratulations to you and your "campers!"

    I am married to a Tongan from Hihifo and I will share this with him.

    Best of luck to you!

    Kristen Fainga'a

    ReplyDelete