Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World)

I didn’t get to teach at Camp GLOW. I don’t know what I was thinking; the application just slipped my mind. Luckily I had the opportunity to nominate 3 of my girls, all of which were selected to attend this year’s camp. The 3 girls I choose have been leaders in my life skills class from the onset. We chatted on the way to camp, it was nice and it was cute; when I picked my girls up after the camp they talked my ear off. They were amazed by their experience.

Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is an annual PEPFAR sponsored camp held regionally in Kenya. Throughout the week the girls were taught on safe sex, team building menstruation and making reusable sanitary pads, crafts and income generating activities. This wouldn’t be a Peace Corps camp if they didn’t go on awesome field trips. This year the students were taken to a VCT (volunteer counseling and testing center for HIV) and to the Impala Park where some of them got to pet a cheetah.

The camp is comprised of hearing and deaf students, and though that may not seem like a big deal it absolutely is, for many of the hearing students it’s their first time interacting and learning from a deaf person. Opening this dialog is the first step to eliminating the stigma deaf people have in the rural villages throughout the country. My girls were thrilled to show me the Kenyan Sign Language alphabet.

For one of my students it was her first time travelling to Kisumu, the closest major town outside of our small town. For all of my students it was the first time they saw Lake Victoria. It was the first time they experienced a week focused on their development. It was the first time they were meeting so many girls from all over the Western region.  They made fast friends with the other 57 girls who attended the camp.

I’ll have to do a sister post with more photos from the camp once I get my hands on them. Here at least, is our journey to the camp.