Camp G.L.O.W.

On Oct. 1 and 2, we held a mini-G.L.O.W. camp at Donsol's high school. G.L.O.W. stands for Girls Leading Our World. The camp was started by a couple of Peace Corps volunteers in Romania in 1995 and has since been repeated thousands of times in countries around the world.

I didn't re-invent the wheel here, but this was my first big project at the high school. It took weeks of organizing, begging for funding and a lot of help from my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and co-teachers. The camp helps young girls to gain confidence and to understand what it means to be a girl and to be a leader in our world today. There is some great material that we teach in two-hour sessions over the two days that includes information about leadership, self-esteem and body image, the environment, girls' health and community development. Plus, the girls just get to have fun!

We had 67 girls attend from my high school and from schools in the outer barangays. Some girls took a boat to come to the camp! Enjoy the pictures below:


The girls are performing an environmental song they wrote for a session on saving their environment.

For an exercise in teamwork, the girls must work together to keep a bucket of water in the air with their feet -- and take off and put back on their shoes in the process!

These girls are participating in the Trust Walk, teaching them how to be both a leader and a follower.

These girls are defining what leadership means to them.

For a session on body image, the girls draw two pictures: How they think others see them and how they see themselves. Some interesting results!

Another teamwork exercise. In the "human knot," the girls work together to try to untangle themselves.

The girls decide together how to use three boards to cross an imaginary river of alligators.