Camp GLOW and GROW

December 9th-12

After almost 9 months of planning and fundraising Camp GLOW and GROW debuted in Vava’u. For 4 days we brought 12 boys and 17 girls together for 4 days of women’s rights education, health, environmental and domestic violence education, as well as working on goal setting, and creating awareness for educational and vocational opportunities after high school.

Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is a long standing international Peace Corps project and is not new to Tonga. Harrison, Sean and myself thought that in order to have a successful chance at tackling some of these issues we also had to educate young men. So for the past months we have been developing a boys version of Camp GLOW which we decided to call Guys Reshaping Our World or GROW.

Of course the camp was not without it’s setbacks, for instance on the starting day of the camp our boys dorm (donated to us by the Wesleyan High School) was heavily under construction thanks to a grant received with the help of Sean. Luckily we were able to procure lodging at the local branch of the Red Cross. Another hiccup was our numbers, originally we had offered spots to 16 boys and 23 girls, but this is Tonga and of course people had last minute reasons why they couldn’t come....

All in all we had a blast at the camp and with our awesome councilors (one of which was my best friend here). We all worked hard and enjoyed our time together. The camps had some sessions together and it was hilarious watching all our young boys prepping themselves to go and meet the girls at the girls dorm across town- so much body spray!

Unfortunately, Harrison and I had to leave the camp on the last day to make our flight to America. We didn’t get to see the closing ceremony and i got to say i was a little bit distraught, saying goodbye to our boys and to my best friend (who moved to the main island to study) was a lot to handle for me. I realized just how hard it will be to leave this place for real, and just how excited I am for year 2.