YSEL Camp

What’s the best part of summertime? Nope, it’s not the beach, ice cream on a hot day, or sundresses. It’s summer camp! I already had the opportunity to direct a one-week girls’ leadership camp in my region (see previous post), but it didn’t stop there for me. Now I’m an English teacher at Ethiopia’s first YSEL camp.

YSEL stands for Youth Solidarity and English Language. It’s run by American Councils (an American NGO involved in international English education and student exchange programs) and funded by the US Embassy in Ethiopia.  The dual purpose of this camp is to teach English and to build solidarity among high school students from all nine regions of Ethiopia. From the whole country, 44 outstanding students were selected for this month-long camp. Some come from wealthy families and attend private schools, while others live alone and support themselves, putting themselves through high school. They are Protestant, Orthodox Christian, and Muslim. Since it’s Ramadan, some of them are keeping up with the demanding camp schedule while fasting. They’re all very proud of their regions, but they’re loving this opportunity to learn about each other’s cultures and celebrate what they all have in common: being Ethiopian.

They asked for PCVs to volunteer as the English teachers, and I jumped at the chance. Now here I am, one week into my two week shift, totally inspired by my students. They’re the best and brightest, and they’re so eager to learn. I teach four classes a day: homeroom, reading, and academic writing.

 I have 11 students in my homeroom class, twice a day. In the mornings I’m teaching them essay writing in the ways that are required for the TOEFL exam and admission essays (so they can apply to colleges abroad), but in the afternoons we cut loose! Together we’ve written mystery stories, performed them as dramas, played an enormous game of charades + catchphrase, and watched a TED talk on sustainable peace and discussed the complexities involved in achieving world peace. This weekend they’re writing a conversation between them and a world-famous hero.

One of my wonderful homeroom students on crazy hat day.

My reading class is a lower level, and we’re just finishing our first book, Bridge to Terabithia. We’re going to try to squeeze in a second, smaller book this last week, called Seedfolks, by Paul Fleischman. It’s about an urban, community garden in Cleveland that slowly attracts people from all walks of life and multiple ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, and they bond over their common gardening space. It fits in nicely with the theme of the camp, so it should be fun to read and discuss. For some of these students, Terabithia was the first novel they’ve ever read in English, so it’s a privilege to be able to share with them the joy of reading stories.

Without supporting evidence, all you have is two lousy pieces of bread. 

In academic writing I’m using a tried and true curriculum that YSEL developed for teaching TEFL students how to write a persuasive essay in six days. Sure enough, the students I taught last week are successfully producing essays that follow the classic five-paragraph structure. It’s a skill that, if they end up studying abroad, will be an essential part of their academic toolbox.

Student artwork on display as part of our weekly talent show.

 Gee, you say, is this summer camp or summer school? Don’t you let these kids have any fun? An excellent question, dear reader. In fact, we have club time after lunch, when last week the students could choose between karate, computer class, theater, aerobics, and poetry. Evening activities include weekly talent shows (where yours truly performed a Bollywood dance courtesy of my college days, to the campers’ delight), debates, movie night, a public speaking competition, and next week, a geography bee. Now you’re wondering if we ever sleep, right? A little bit, but who needs sleep when you get to be part of a camp like this?

Yeah, that's right, I'm holding plates of brownies and peanut butter cookies. Icing on the cake!

Camp GLOW

Camp GLOW Nekemte 2013 in full force!

“I AM STRONG WOMAN!” – The cry that rang out on the last day of Camp GLOW Nekemte and gave me shivers up my spine to hear it.

Every summer in developing countries around the world, Peace Corps volunteers come together to put on summer  camps for young girls, called Camp GLOW: Girls Leading Our World. Funded by PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), the camps teach girls about health, leadership, gender, volunteerism, and teamwork. This summer in Ethiopia, 12 camps will take place, including our camp in the city of Nekemte.

This year with 15 powerhouse PCVs, 8 Ethiopian adult counterparts, and 6 stellar returning junior counselors, we decided to go all out and bring a total of 66 ninth grade girls as campers from our towns to Nekemte, despite only being required to bring 30. Despite our utter exhaustion at the camp’s conclusion, we couldn’t be more glad we went big, because our camp was “an epic success.”  Humble we may not be, but as director of this year’s Nekemte Camp GLOW, I couldn’t be more proud of our collective efforts to give as many girls as possible the best camp we could.  

The central message of our camp was female leadership, with sessions designed to answer three fundamental questions: what is leadership, why should girls be leaders, and how can they practically demonstrate leadership?  Our sessions included a variety of topics and activities – anatomy, STIs, HIV prevention, gender roles, gender-based violence, intro to volunteerism, mural painting, cooking demo with nutrition lesson, container gardening, resisting peer pressure,  public speaking, and more, if you can believe it – with all roads leading back to leadership. Our goal was to give them a concrete understanding of the variety of ways to be a leader, including being a role model of positive behavior and purposefully pursuing your goals, so that girls can immediately begin  applying leadership even while they’re still students.

To that end, I want to share with you the stories of two girls from Fincha:

First is Chaltu*, who lives with her grandparents and her aunt. Throughout the school year she’s only allowed to leave the house for school, and must remain at home the rest of the time, as is the case for most girls in Ethiopia. In fact, her aunt forbade her to come to the camp until her grandfather stepped in and overruled the decision. Five days into camp we took all the girls on a field trip to visit successful women in Nekemte and hear their stories. Walking with Chaltu back to camp, she told me that she’s always wished she was a boy, because they’re free to go where they like and do what they want, but that because of this week at camp and hearing those successful women speak, she’s realized that it’s good to be a woman. In her words, “woman is the base of everything. Without woman, there is nothing.” She began the week shy and quiet, but by the end of the week she was freely laughing and competitively participating in field day, showing the confidence that is the foundation of leadership.

Stop #1 of the field trip: a grocery store owned by Chaltu's relative

Second is Ayantu*, the daughter of a prominent figure in the county’s education bureau. A naturally reserved and poised young woman, she quickly took the lead in two distinct ways. One was translation. Our camp was conducted in three spoken languages – English, Amharic (Ethiopia’s national language), and Afan Oromo (the regional language) – and Ayantu easily translated our English into either language whenever one of our junior counselors or counterparts wasn’t available. The other involves  our camp’s fourth language : sign language. Our camp was held at the Nekemte School for the Deaf, four of our campers were deaf, and members of the cooking and maintenance staff were also deaf. Ayantu was on the same team as our deaf campers, and she jumped right into learning sign language directly from her teammates. Long before the end of the week she was stringing signs together to make sentences and playing games with them that didn’t require speech, modeling for other campers how to treat them with respect and see them as more than their disability.  

Ayantu using her new sign language skills to communicate with her teammates

I’m very proud of these two Fincha ladies, and there are another 64 stories just like the two I’ve shared. On Saturday during field day, one of the activities was a voice projection exercise, to teach girls to literally find their voices. We asked them to shout at the top of their lungs, “I am a strong woman!,” and even the typically quieter girls held nothing back. When it came time for our closing candle ceremony, all 66 girls were in tears. We asked one of the girls why she was so moved, and she said she never expected to feel like she could be a leader. No one had ever told her it was possible before.

I can hardly express how inspiring and rewarding it was to see the girls embrace the possibility that they could be  female leaders and just GLOW with the knowledge that if nothing else, they can be the leaders of their own lives. Ladies and gentlemen, this is why I joined the Peace Corps!

 

Me and my team of monkeys!

*Name has been changed

Painting my Model Classroom: A Success Story

6/16/13

As an education PCV, I’m guided by the education program framework, which stipulates that my work should focus in part on training teachers in incorporating more active learning methods into their lessons. To that end, we’re encouraged to establish model classrooms in our schools and train teachers on how the classroom itself can be used as a teaching tool. Halfway through the school year I succeeded in getting the key to a classroom, and considered that a victory in itself. However, while the room was structurally sound, it was in disrepair both in terms of furniture and paint, so I determined that if the classroom was going to be a model classroom, it needed a paint job and new desks to be worthy of the name.

The classroom after the walls had gotten a thorough scrub

Peace Corps Ethiopia recently started a mini-grant program, through which PCVs can receive grants of no more than 3,000 birr (roughly $160) by an expedited application and review process. Armed with this knowledge, I met with the school director and the cluster supervisor to determine the school’s interest in supporting my project. They were thrilled with the idea, and in fact pledged to provide me with new desks, paintbrushes, and talented students as their contribution.

Two months later the desks had been built and I had received approval and funding for my project. The implementation got off to a rocky start, with scores of students scrubbing the walls only to abandon the work after 20 minutes each, but with the help of a dedicated teacher, we succeeded in rounding up enough rotations of students to get the walls cleaned. After that the director found three eighth grade students who agreed to paint with me all week , and things went uphill from there. Those three came every day, twice a day, for four days until the work was finished. Not only did they come, but they were good sports when I insisted we do touch-ups on all the mistakes we’d made, and they continually chased away the crowds of students who would gather to watch and jeer at the foreigner. Working with them was the highlight of the experience by far.

My three dedicated painters

 We finished and got the desks moved into the room just in time for the end of the school year, so while I haven’t been able to use it yet, it’s primed and ready for me to hit the ground running next October. I plan to hold two weekly English clubs in it, and to model teach while the teacher observes at least once a week, demonstrating how to rearrange the desks to facilitate group work and other simple techniques for increasing participation. Getting the room put together and ready gave me a great sense of accomplishment to take with me through the summer months!

The finished product!