Girls Group take one

My girls group started with the most excitement that I have seen in this country. The girls were excited to have a new event, new group and have the focus be solely on them providing them a space for empowerment, learning and fun. However, with all good intentions, I still get to make mistakes and learn from my missteps. So, with that in mind, here is part one of a multipart blogpost about the journey of me and my girls group. The journey is not yet over, it's only just begun. So any potential negative ending hasn't really happened yet, it's my pessimism, being balanced out, or sometimes making me loco, by my hopeful idealism; I won't stop believing. The more I reflect on my girls group, the happier I am that I am working with them.

My group started when I took two girls to a regional girls conference and after the conference we met, planned for the following weeks meeting. They decided who they wanted to join the group and we all worked together and wrote invitations. The first meeting was awesome! There was lots of energy, the girls were leading the icebreakers, name games, discussions and I was getting to know the girls more. We used a few get to know you techniques from the girls curriculum which was developed by other peace corps volunteers. I found the worksheets extremely helpful and it gave the girls something to focus on during the class and helped to ease them into the curriculum of the program and gave me an opportunity to get to know them a little better. For example, we shared our nicknames, hometowns, how many brothers and sisters we have in our family and things like that. We had about two or three classes with this type of getting to know you activity.

When the group was starting, I had applied for and received a grant to celebrate international women's day, march 8th 2011. We celebrated the event on March 12th 2011 and several of the girls helped me in planning the event. Reflecting on the planning for this activity, I may have made one of my first missteps. I asked four girls, girls who didn't go to the conference, to help me in the planning...eh, my analyzing mind thinks this may have thrown off the event or the group as a whole or perhaps I offended the two girls I took. (I haven't worked with teenagers, much less teenage girls, in this capacity for quite some time and sometimes perhaps I forget to be more conscientious of my audience). I also may have offered this activity too soon in the existence of the group and didn't quite have the confianza, trust, needed to pull of the activity successfully.

Despite my analysis and reflection now, generally the women's day event went off well. The girls learned to make several different art products from recycled materials; tambourines, maracas, drums, mirrors and little lizards. I gave a talk about gender roles in the culture with one of the girls in the group (one who came with me to the conference) and about 35 girls from the home came to do art activities in the neighboring community. It was really cool to see the girls working with community members and doing different types of artwork that they may not have worked on before. The girls worked alongside members of the community, their caregivers and a few internationals, myself included. Some pictures of the event are below.

My awesome welcome sign made with the help of my wife

The youth hard at work learning their craft

The youth working on their mirrors

Finished products

One of the lizards finished and painted

Overall, the event was a success. The girls got out of the orphanage for an afternoon, shared learning a new activity with the neighboring community, used some of their creative/artistic mind, and were able to take a little souvenir home with them. Moreover, they got to see that they can be artistic with products they have lying around the house or can be easily found for little cost. I thought it was cool.

What I'm learning is that I can be pretty hard on myself. I had one idea of how the event would go and lo and behold, the event went a completely different direction. Does that make the event a failure or my girls group a failure? No, not at all. I'm learning to be easy on myself and let events and moments unfold as they're meant to. With all the planning in the world for an event, aspects will end up differently than I had imagined, and that's okay. In the end, the girls learned something and had a new experience. I hope I can, and I will, continue to provide that opportunity for them.