Every Peace Corps country has a Gender and Development (GAD) sector.
This sector is devoted to empowering the youth and gender groups of the host country
nationals. This year was the first year PCP put on a Men's Health and Finance Seminar. I
sent a member of my community to this week long seminar and he returned to the
community eager to show me what he had learned. Topics were covered from gender
roles, self esteem and personal goals, finance tips, leadership roles and group
conflict resolution. I am hoping he will be a counterpart for the reforestation project in my community, and I am encouraging him to use what he learned in upcoming reforestation meetings.
Furthermore, a popular workshop thru GAD is called
“Elige tu vida” or “Choose your life”. A few volunteers in the surrounding area
and myself planned this workshop in Bajo Cedro, a community about 15 minutes by
bus from me. My community does not have a high school so several muchachos
travel to Bajo Cedro after they finish elementary school. Even though I helped
out in this workshop away from Santa Marta, I was still able to have an effect
on the muchachos from my community.
Elige Tu Vida -Choose Your Life- is a five-hour workshop designed to
help young Panamanians critically think about their futures. Developed by
Peace Corps Panama volunteers a few years back, ETV is broken into three
main themes: self discovery, goal setting, and sexual health. Within each category
are a series of fun charlas, or mini-discussions. During the self
discovery section, kids identify their most important values and individual
strengths. My favorite activity in this portion is “Bucket Filling.” The
charla talks about the power of words, the ability we each have to fill the
tanks of one another and ourselves through positive affirmation and
compliments. After writing three self-identified strengths, each kid writes and
receives a note – a bucket filler- from three classmates. This is hard for some
of the participants- I would say that compliment giving is not done frequently
within the Comarca- but the smiles, the laughs, the fuller tanks is always
one of the most heartwarming and fun moments of the day.
(Bucket Filling is actually something practiced
within the volunteer community as well. At most training events, we make
our own buckets – decorated envelopes- and are encouraged to leave notes to our
amigos during the week. At least half the bucket fillers are jokes,
puns, and nonsense and the rest genuine sweet and short words of praise. I guess
bucket filling as a nearly 23 year old might seem a bit silly, childish, and
forced, but nearly all my PCV friends have that envelope kept somewhere in
their house, taken out for reassurance and a chuckle in the moments of doubt,
failure, and uncertainty. )
In part two, goal setting and future planning, we
talk about the difference between dreams and goals (It doesn’t cost anything to
dream) and help participants develop both short and long term goal plans. In
this section we bring up different professions, talk about university
opportunities, and encourage the students to think about what they can do now
to better the likelihood of achieving their goals. I like ETV because it
is realistic. Most of the particpants said they wished to pursue some sort of
profession after going to college. But the reality of their futures is not as
shiny- only 18% of Ngabes aged 15-19 study past sixth grade.
Though one of the goals of Elige Tu Vida is raising
that dismal statistic, we are not naive to think a day of ETV will result in
soaring graduation rates. But hopefully it has some impact. These kids
have genuinely never set goals, never written to-do lists, never thought hard
about the road they’ll take to arrive to their future destination. The
resources are limited- the nearest 10th grade is an hour and a half hike away,
there is never enough money to pay for new uniforms of notebooks, they have no
access to internet, resource books, or libraries. The have a fight ahead of
them, a fight most kids in the United States don’t have, and we try to be
realistic at this section. I hope deeply that the future will provide more
opportunities and the kids WILL become teachers and engineers, but reassure
them that it is okay to change plans. Sometimes life throws obstacles we can’t
dodge. Sometimes they hit us hard and knock us off our feet and when we finally
stand up again, we envision a different future. During this section we are
adamant in encouraging continuing education, because education IS what will
change the future, but also make sure to note that staying in the Comarca,
working in agriculture doesn’t mean you are a failure.
The future planning section finished with without a
doubt is the favorite charla of the day.. The Baby Game. In the Baby
Game, we chose a participant (the most “muchacho” in the class) to help us out
in acting out a fictional story. The scenario is as follows: each month, if the
student maintains a GPA above 3.5 (on a 5 point scale) he receives an
educational stipend of $50/month. (In reality, it’s actually $30/month.) He
then has to pay half of it for transportation to and from his school. Once at
school, he has to shell out cash for new notebooks, dictionaries, etc. At the
end of the month, if he has leftover money (which at the beginning he always
does), he gets to do a fun activity with his friends- go to a fiesta, buy phone
minutes, etc. This portion is fun- he actually gets fake money, and we as
volunteers make sure to ham up the interactions by playing over the top
teachers, chiva drivers, and narrators.
In the second month we find out he has a girlfriend-
which in this scenario I was the girlfriend.. His GPA drops, but it’s still
high enough to receive the monthly stipend, and he continues through the
cycle. As the months progress, his GPA continues to lower. We find out
from the teacher he is spending more time with his girlfriend than in class,
and we get to meet his lady friend with a surprise for the student.. A BABY!
The reaction at this point is a deafening roar of laughter and disbelief. The
baby mama is always hilarious and over the top (easy for me to do) and the participants eat it up.
The cycle continues until eventually his GPA drops
so low that he doesn’t receive the money, anything he has saved has gone to
taking care of the baby, and to support the family he must drop out of school
and work a menial, low-paying job chopping down the forest with a machete for
ten hours a day. At the end, we review what the goal of the student was at the
beginning of the dramatization, what changed, and the obstacles that prohibited
him from achieving it.
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| Me surprising my man with a baby! |
After a discussion of the obstacles we then
transition into more serious topics: HIV/AIDS, STI transmission, birth
control, etc. First we start by quitar la pena, or throwing all our
embarrassment out the window, by breaking up by sex and having each write
down slang and dirty words for the other private parts. This is great, and more
than anything, a great learning experience for the volunteers. These kids are
creative! From that point on, we establish we are mature and only use the
scientific names: vagina and penis.
Next, we dramatize how HIV weakens the body through
an interactive “fight” activity, dispel myths on how HIV is spread, and mimic
the transmission through an activity called Glitter HIV. In the game, without
explaining why, we ask two students to wear socks on their right hand, a
partner to hold each others hand, and two who keep their hands firmly in their
pocket. We then simply say we are going to mingle and greet one another through
a handshake. Unknowingly, one of the volunteers has started with glitter on
their hand, and through the activity as hands are shook, the glitter is spread.
At the end, we ask participants to look down and they are shocked by the red
sparkles spattering their palms. We explain how one person started with
glitter, or the STI, but as we shook hands ( representing sex) the glitter
spread. Though not everyone shook the person’s hand who started with the
glitter, almost everyone has it by the end. We then review the ABC’s of disease
prevention: Absintencia (Abstinence), Bien Fiel
(Being Loyal), and Condones (Condoms).
The final activity of the day is without a doubt
the one that gives students the most pena, or embarrassment. We
perform a pretty funny skit of a young couple preparing to have sex for the
first time, but completely clueless about using condoms. There’s a part where
he opens it with a machete, asks if he can wash it after use and throw it on
the roof to dry and reuse, and put it on the morning before the evening deed’s
to be done. After consulting the advice of an older friend, we show correct
condom use (from checking the expiration date to disposing it after use) and
then break into partners to practice putting condoms. ( Some use bananas, we
used finger pistol penises.) There is so much giggling, so much unwillingness
to touch the condoms, but we break ‘em down eventually. Then we blow them up
into balloons and finish with a game of condom balloon hot potato.
The day is
dynamic, fun, and exhausting for participants and facilitators alike. This was
my first Elige Tu Vida, but I would enjoy participating in more.. Like much of
our work as Peace Corps Volunteers, it’s hard to say what impact we really
have. I know that most of these kids will probably not go to college, many will
drop out before the finish highschool to start, or because of, having children.
But there’s always the glimmer of hope that one kid took what we said to heart,
one kid will continue goal setting, continue school, continue making smart
decisions. And for us, that one kid matters.
I will be participating in a GAD Summer Camp in February which is an extended version of ETV so stayed tuned!
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| Bajo Cedro 9th Grade Class and the PC team! |
