Camp GLOW & Garden Time

It's been a while since I have written a blog post, so it was time to write one up!

This past week, I took part in the Group 89 Vanua Levu PCVs in Camp GLOW. "Camp GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World and is a worldwide Peace Corps initiative to empower young women of developing nations to be strong leaders. The camp focused on the development of wellness, self-confidence, and leadership. With these life skills, the participants of Camp GLOW will share their new knowledge with their communities. During the camp, we held group discussion, games, sports, crafts, exercise, gardening, health education, a career panel, and community speakers." The United States Ambassador even came to speak to the girls, which they thought was just the coolest thing ever!

 

What I mostly did to help out was run errands back and forth from town, helped with cooking, and gave a presence of a male that cares about these girls future. At first the girls thought it was weird to see a male at a Girls Leading Our World camp, but after me just being me they came around and started actually chatting with me about things. It was amazing to see these girls change in just a few short days. They really understood what we were trying to get across to them, and even taught us somethings as well.

Mental health here in the pacific is very poor. Many people (especially women) think that them hating themselves is normal, and that being miserable to normal. So many people think that happiness is what they feel, which is not the case. During this camp, the girls told many people that they had this new feeling of happiness that they had never felt before. We has the volunteers gave these girls a week that they will never forget and they will hopefully take what they have learned to their communities.

Helping facilitate the camp really brought me back to my roots, a camp counselor. It made me really miss being at Double H (HH) and being with my kids. The magic that HH has, truly is something special. Being at HH for so many summers, I have made that magic a part of my every day life. It lives inside me and I try and spread it to others in the world. This camp was a way for me to do that in a way that I knew how, being at camp. Each of the campers that I have had at HH have taught me something new about myself or about life. This one week at GLOW did the exact same as HH did. I was able to just be Tim the camp Counselor who is silly, goofy, and a little weird sometimes.

 

My major goal for projects here in Fiji has turned to doing another camp GLOW next year, and to even start a boys camp called Camp BILD (Boys In Leadership Development). I'm hoping that this will really give me a push to do something really great here during my service.

I started planning out my garden that I am attempting to have beside my house. I managed to stake out all the plots that I need, and dug for over 2 hours on the first plot and only got 1/2 way done with it. Gardening is hard work ya all!! I have never sweated so much during work in a long long time! Had to stop for the day because I was starting to get light headed from the heat and not being able to drink enough water. Hopefully I will be able to find a local kid/boy/man who will help me and maybe just do it for me :-) Use my resources as I like to say!

Hope all is good in the world of America! I have also added many pictures to my Facebook so here is the link again to the album and to the Camp LOW album.

Fiji Album
Posters I've Made Album 
Camp GLOW Album

Tofa!