Girls Camp

There is a World Bank statistic that says, for every year a girl stays in school, it adds five years to her life. It becomes glaringly clear here that, confidence, and self-reliance are the keys to sustaining girls’ education. Keeping the girls in school is the difficult part. One of the largest deterrents is boys, or disturbances, as they are called here. Many of the questions that the girls ask are around how to say “no” to boys’ “offers”. Taking the girls out of the village, away from disturbances, and to a place where they can focus on their own development, seemed like a good place to start empowering the girls to break free from cultural traditions.

Over the past three days, Annie, Sarah, Katie, and I held a KnowledgeBeat sponsored Girls Empowerment Camp in Itezhi Tezhi for 47 7th, 8th, and 9th grade girls from Ngoma. We chose an activity-based approach to teaching the importance of self-reliance, both financial and social, as well as entrepreneurship and creativity. In keeping with our approach of working through local people, three Zambian women from Ngoma facilitated the camp: the Area Warden’s wife, Colinah, a ZAWA officer, Anety, and a teacher, Lillian. These women were chosen because they balance their lives as women in Zambia. They stayed in school and pursued a career while balancing their family commitments. We hoped that these three women would be role models that the girls could learn from not only during the camp but also in their daily lives long after the camp concluded.

The girls were shy and quiet at first, but as the days went on, they became more vocal and active about what they wanted to be in life and how they were going to make that happen. The activities were designed to show the girls they could make choices at any stage of their life, that they must be creative and self-reliant to accomplish these goals, and that they must think critically to overcome obstacles. Generally the facilitators would run a group activity and then circle together at the end to discuss processing questions; 1. Why was that activity important? 2. What did you learn? 3. What happens when someone tries to stop you from continuing school 3.What did you do to overcome obstacles in the game? Etc. At the end of each day the girls performed an activity called Building Bridges in which they paired off and discussed their goals (both financial and social), how they were going to achieve them, what obstacles might present themselves, and various ways they could overcome those obstacles. This was a highlight to the day in my opinion. It allowed all of us time to get to know the girls on a more 1:1 basis. We could walk around and provoke more thoughts and discussion and answer the questions that they wanted to ask us. The girls were fascinated to know (and would giggle a lot) when they found out we didn’t have boyfriends, we were 27 (Katie is 17), we had finished school, and we were UNMARRIED! What a novel idea…

We had the girls fill out surveys at the beginning of the camp and again at the end to try and capture some of their perceptions and thoughts about what they had learned. The girls said it best in their own words…

“Yes I have changed, I was thinking to be a teacher, now I want to be a doctor.” Meruis Papalu

“As girls we have to put more effort at school so we can be someone in our life.” Monica Kunda

“For me I want [ed] to stop school because of [no] sponsor, but now I know how [to] overcome this situation.” Patricia Phiri

“Anety inspired me in something I wanted to achieve in my life so I can be like her.” Mirriam Nyirenta

“I think this program should not stop it must just continue teaching us so that we finish school and start working. I am very happy with this program. It must continue [to] encourage us. I thank very much for the honor of this program.” Mercy Namukolo

The closing ceremony in which we awarded each girl a Certificate of Achievement and presented the facilitators and cooks with shitanga’s showing our appreciation for their hard-work brought beaming smiles to everyone’s face. As the girls broke out into traditional celebratory dances of appreciation, the challenges and frustrations of operating the camp washed away. Over the last few days we had navigated our way through purchasing live chickens for dinner, beef directly from a butcher (they do not remove bones), being told we had “run out of food” due to adults overloading before the girls got near the food, plucked girls out of the kitchen who had been tasked with washing dishes rather than participating in the camp, and a myriad of other constantly arising issues. But in the end, none of that really matters, and none of that will ever disappear no matter where you are working. What does matter is that for a few days, those girls had an experience that very few girls from rural areas in Zambia ever get a chance to have. Their appreciation radiated from their faces and their parting thoughts. We look forward to learning with them and improving with each future camp.