I am on top of the world. I’m soaring, I’m glowing,
I’m fairly radiating joy, and I’m not even exaggerating!
Two weeks ago, 25 ninth grade girls, 5 tenth grade
girls, and 1 American gathered in an empty classroom after school at Fincha’s
high school. The ninth graders were wide-eyed, whispering, and wary. The tenth
grade girls were quiet as well, but their silence concealed excited
anticipation. They had been waiting for this since they returned from our Camp
GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) last summer in the big city: the chance to put
into practice what they’d learned, and lead their carefully chosen ninth
graders into the attitude of confidence and hope they’d since adopted. That’s
right, we had finally started Fincha GLOW Club!
With sideways glances, we decided which of these
new leaders would start us off: Ayantu* and Lemlem.* Without any instruction
from me, they started by explaining Camp GLOW and how over the week-long camp they’d
learned about leadership, gender, female reproductive health, disability
awareness, and volunteerism. They then designed and explained how we would get
to know each other: each ninth grader should share her name, what her dream
career is, and why she’s excited to be included in this oh-so-special
club. They shyly stood one-by-one and
shared how they want to doctors, lawyers, political leaders, and scientists,
and how lucky they felt to be in the room.
Then it was my turn. I explained a little bit about
leadership, and asked them to tell me the names of women they admire around the
world. After each sentence, my tenth graders would translate my words into Afan
Oromo, so that every ninth grader could understand. Names like Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf, Valentina Tershkova, and Hillary Clinton were eagerly proffered, to
nods of agreement, but when I wrote Tirunesh Dibaba’s name on the board, we
ground to a halt.
“As I think, she is not a leader,” said one
especially brave ninth grader. Exclamations to the contrary arose, and Ayantu
immediately stepped in.
“Raise your hand if you think she is a leader,” she
directed. Many hands rose.
“Why do you say she is a leader?” She then asked.
Silence. She repeated her question in Afan Oromo to continued silence. These girls
have never been asked to offer their own ideas in class before, so their
silence is understandable, but Ayantu was having none of it.
“You shouldn’t have to be afraid. You should have
to share your idea!” With her continued coaxing, ideas finally began to come
from these previously paralyzed girls.
“She is a famous athlete.”
“She is an example.”
“Hard worker.”
“Brave.” I quickly wrote them all on the board so
they could see their ideas, valued and compiled. Ayantu moved on to the
naysayers, who argued that she was a role model, which was not the same thing
as a leader. And with that, thanks to Ayantu’s initiative, I had my gaps and my
starting place for the next lesson: we were going to tackle leadership and how
leading yourself is just as important as leading others.
Fast-forward to today, our first real session. I
began walking them through what makes a person a good leader of others, such as
providing the vision, maintaining motivation, solving problems and reconciling
differences, and making your team members feel appreciated and supported. When
I got to reconciling differences, suddenly Lemlem and Bashatu,* another of my
tenth graders, had stood up and were whispering to Ayantu: they had an idea for
a quick drama about how a leader should reconcile differences! They disappeared
outside for about 60 seconds, and then delivered a concise drama in which they
get into a heated argument about how much paint to buy for a mural, and Ayantu
must intervene to find a solution. True to form, she immediately stepped in and
started by saying,
“Both of your ideas are good, but you must find a
way to agree.” Unconsciously, she’d just modeled how to make your team members
feel valued while you’re solving disagreements!
Shifting to the half of the board that I’d labeled
“Leading Yourself,” I asked them how you can lead yourself, and Lemlem, unable
to hold it in, burst out,
“Have a plan!” We all laughed, and I wrote it on
the board, adding dreams and goals to the bullet point. I walked them through
how you have to have a dream and you have to have values, and then you have to
make your choices and act according to those dreams and values, not according
to peers, and definitely not according to fear. As Ayantu reworded it,
“Don’t choose the silent path!” When I asked what
was missing from the board, Bashatu spoke up:
“Believe you can!” How could I have forgotten?
We moved on to the small group discussions, in
which I gave each group one tenth grader and one write-up about an exemplary
woman in the world. I’d chosen Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (first female president of
an African country – Liberia), Malala Yousafzai (teen activist for female
education in Pakistan, despite being shot in the head by the Taliban), Liya
Kebede (Ethiopian-born super model who used her success to start a foundation
supporting maternal health in Ethiopia’s rural areas), Nasrin Oryakhil, (Afghanistani
OB-GYN and director of the Malalai Maternity Hospital in Kabul, who is
committed to advancing the role of women in medical professions), and
Yalemtsehay Mekonnen (first female professor at Addis Ababa University,
Ethiopia’s top university).
I watched as the tenth graders facilitated
deciphering the English blurb and discussing how each of these women are
leaders, and continued watching as each girl who came up to present explained
to everyone, with pride and with clear voices, the accomplishments of the women
they’d been given.
We closed by moving outside to the field, to play a
game that I had missed last summer, so I said to my former campers,
“Take the lead!” And take the lead they did. They
got everyone into a circle, explained the rules, and directed them step-by-step
through how to play. Before long everyone was giggling and exclaiming: they
were being teenage girls for once!
As the ninth graders dispersed toward their homes,
Lemlem approached me. She remembered a session on sex versus gender roles that
we had done last summer, which she wanted to be the topic of our next session,
with she and I as the co-facilitators. We set a date to meet before the next
session to plan, and parted ways, both grinning from ear to ear.
---
I directed that camp last summer, and as the week
drew to a close, we PCVs were sighing with exhausted satisfaction. We felt sure
we had reached those girls, and that they were going home armed with the
knowledge that they were strong women and that they could be leaders. But how
could we really know? Camp was over and they would go back to their regular
routines of school and housework on endless repeat.
How could we really know? By starting a GLOW Club! It
is now confirmed: these girls have been empowered! They believe that they are
strong and capable, and they are modeling that for their ninth graders to a
degree that surpasses even my highest hopes for them. These are girls who at
the beginning of camp were just like the ninth graders in our club are now:
unable to speak at a volume intelligible to anyone else in the room, unable to
offer up their ideas in response to a simple question, and certainly unable to
lead a roomful of peers. My heart feels way too big for my chest. I can’t even
imagine work more rewarding than this!
Time is a fickle beast. (Wait, what? Where’s the
transition? Don’t worry, I’ll tie it back to the topic, I promise.) It grinds
to a halt when we most want to skip ahead and it speeds by when we most want it
to stop, but worst of all, it makes us question the worth of our activities. It
asks us,
“Are two years really worth it, if you’ve spent a
large portion of it engaged in leisure activities or failed programs?” But I finally
have my rebuttle ready, and I feel sure it will stick:
“Yes, YES, YES! OF COURSE it’s worth it!” I am triumphantly shouting in my head. Having the
opportunity to uplift these girls’ opinions of themselves, teach them how to
dream and how to lead, and then witness them not only embody all that they’ve
learned but also spread the word to their peers is the sum total of all I could
have hoped for out of my service. Everything else is just icing.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have here one ecstatic
PCV who can hardly contain herself. In fact, that second club session only
ended about an hour ago. I couldn’t wait to write it down and post it. Joy like
this is meant to be shared!
*Names have been changed.
