Some of you know that I wrote before about how I am working on a full GLOW camp for girls with some other PCVs, but I recently just had a GLOW Day event in my village as well. The original plan was for it to be an event just for the boys at the JSS ( Guys Leading Our World) because the girls have had their own events to go to, and the boys were feeling left out. The JSS guidance teachers and I thought it would also be a nice opportunity for the boys to discuss issues that impact them specifically, such as Safe Male Circumcision (SMC), which decreases a boy's or man's chance of getting HIV. Also, issues of dating violence have been coming up at school, and a few of the PACT club boys had spoken with me about how it bothered them that some of their peers felt like it was ok to hit their girlfriends, so we also thought it would be a good way to address those sort of issues. The boys in PACT were enthusiastic about signing up for the event, but the problem is that PACT club doesn't have very many boys in it, and they tried really hard to encourage more of their male peers to sign up, but were only able to get a handful to. I was able to receive supplies for up to 30 students so this left many slots open. To remedy this problem and make it so that the event still took place, we decided to allow some girls to sign up as well, making it a "Guys and Girls Leading Our World" Day instead. I actually think that having the boys and girls there together made the event even better.
The event was on Saturday and went from 9am until about 3:30pm. There were plenty of snacks, drinks, and food for the students thanks to the DAC (District AIDS Coordinator) Office, which was great. Seventeen students out of those who signed up showed up on Saturday morning, and even though it was not the 30 we had hoped for, it was still a good sized group. The group was made up of 7 boys and 10 girls ranging from Form 1 to Form 3, and some of the students were involved in PACT club and some were not. Topics discussed on GLOW Day were Gender Norms, SMC for the boys and Self-Esteem for the girls ( We split them for that session so that the boys would still feel comfortable asking questions about SMC), Dating Relationships, Teen Pregnancy and Sexual Rights and Responsibilities, and Abuse and Violence. The students were very engaged and got into some great debates during the day.
The very first session was about Gender Norms, and right away the boys and the girls brought up some difficult topics and debated with each other very well. One topic that came up was that it is unfair that girls can wear pants in most cases here, but that a boy would be bullied if he wanted to wear a dress. They even talked about how if a boy wants to do things girls like to do or hangs out with too many girls, people may say he is gay. This lead to a discussion and debate about whether or not gay people are stigmatized in the village or not. Some students said yes people say "harsh words" to someone who is gay here, and others said that gay people would be more likely to be stigmatized or treated poorly in larger villages or cities because there are more "gangs" or "mobs". They also talked about how they think that today it is more likely for girls and boys to change roles rather than to follow the "traditional" way of doing things here, though they still discussed how there are challenges and situations of judgment and discrimination.
During part of the Dating Relationships section the girls got to write down questions they always wanted to ask boys as a group, and the boys got to write down questions they always wished they could ask girls as a group. This activity also lead to some great discussions. Some things that came up were girls viewing love in a different way than boys viewing love sometimes and how that can cause confusion and problems in relationships between girls and boys. Also, some of the boys were upset that the girls said that physical appearance is something that attracts them to a boy initially, even though they had said that something that attracted them to girls initially was also physical appearance. The boys also talked about how unfair it is that they are always expected to be the ones to pay on dates, and some of the girls agreed with this, while others still thought the boys should pay. We were able to bring a lot of the dating relationship discussion back to gender norms.
A lot of debate and discussion came out of the Teen Pregnancy session as well. We asked the students to list what the consequences of teen pregnancy were for girls and what they were for boys, and the majority of the consequences that were listed ended up being under the girl list. One of the consequences that the students spent a lot of time talking about was that a girl would likely drop out of school,while the boy would be able to stay in school. Something else that the students spent a lot of time talking about was the idea that a girl who has had a baby may not be desirable to boys in the future because it is known now that she is not a virgin, since she had a baby. The girls were upset by this comment and the unfairness of the girl being judged about this when the boy was obviously no longer a virgin either. Some of the boys had a difficult time understanding how that was unfair, but I think it was good for the girls and boys to be able to have the discussion and share each other's view points, and hopefully they gained some new perspectives and could see some of the inequality.
The Abuse and Violence session was focused mostly on dating violence because that is something that has been coming up at the school and was something that came up during various discussions throughout the day. The students all agreed that different types of violence occur in Werda, and some of the violence even occurs at school. They said that there are physical fights outside almost every day that are broken up by teachers, students say cruel things to each other and abuse each other emotionally because of gossip, and that there is even sexual and emotional abuse that happens between people who are dating. They also talked about random acts of violence at school when male students hide together in the bathrooms and attack female students when they go in (The teacher who was present at this event was made aware of the situation). The nonchalance of the students as they talked about some of this was upsetting, but we spent a lot of time talking afterward about why abuse happens, how it is wrong, the consequences of abuse, who they can report it to, and some possible solutions, such as them watching out for each other and supporting each other ( the boys watching out for the girls and girls watching out for the boys). We also emphasized that men and boys are not the only ones who can be abusive because there were a couple points when the girls talked about boys in general as being abusive and violent, and we wanted to be clear that not all boys and men are and that girls and women can be abusive too.
We ended the day on a positive note by assessing what they learned during the day with a game. Student had to listen to statements and then decide whether or not to go to the Agree or Disagree side of the room. All of the statements were factual and based on the sessions from the day. Based on this activity and the discussions throughout the day, it seems like they learned something and had fun. Each student was given a certificate for having participated, and we took a group picture before saying our goodbyes.
I really love events like this! Thank you to my three PCV friends who helped facilitate this day! You know who you are!
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