Air, Water, Flour and Dreams. Day 3 at Camp GLOW!

Day 3 at Camp GLOW, the girls learned the significance of assertiveness and decision making.  Being aware of how we project ourselves when interacting with others and how that can elicit very different responses.  Our goal is to teach our girls to be more assertive and that it is not synonymous with being rude or threatening.  Counselors demonstrated the difference between being assertive, aggressive, and passive so they can visually see and hear how words can convey different meanings based on tone and body language.  We are trying to empower our girls to speak up for themselves and to be confident so that they can ultimately grow up to be our future leaders.

In the business development session we encouraged girls to save money in fun, creative ways.  Sewing their own money pouch is a simple activity that can be especially motivating for our girls.  Most already know how to sew, so we used that existing skill and simply showed them how to create and design something new and exciting while also serving as an income generating activity. 

In our goal setting session we asked the girls to imagine their future.  What will they study?  What career will they have?  Where will they be in 10 years?  What will they be doing?  We then had them draw what they wanted to accomplish by 2023.  Along with explaining what goals are, and the importance of both short term and long term goals, we tried to get them to imagine a future that they wanted—not one that someone else wanted for them.  This was actually a difficult task as many of them have never really considered what they want to do in life; their culture tells them that their desires are irrelevant, and so many of them have begun to feel irrelevant.  But we have been prodding the fire of imagination, creativity and desire, and it is quite remarkable to witness the result—to see the girls dare to dream.  We asked the girls to stand up and answer the question, “Who are you?”  Though in the beginning they stumbled awkwardly and whispered timidly to the class, some of them began to find their voice.  They are women.  They are strong, independent, confident.  They have dreams.  And they have the ability to change the world.   

And as always we had a healthy dose of fun.  We played a game called Air, Water, Flour, where three girls sat down and three other girls danced about behind them with buckets filled of one of the above substances.  When the music stopped, the girls dumped the contents of the bucket onto whichever girl was in front of them: air, water or flour.  The reactions were fantastic.  Take a look: