Now that we're past the one year mark, time is going by extra fast.
To catch you all up on my work, I finished school at the end of May. With the end of school came the Gallery Opening for Photo Club. We had a great time as a group setting up the room at the DANKO office and being creative with displaying our photos. On the gallery opening day, a local news paper came and interviewed some students as well as the local news station. That was fun to hear the kids talk about the importance of photography and art. So proud of the work we accomplished together!
After the end of school I took a much needed break to travel to Taiwan and Hong Kong. One of my good friends in Kyrgyzstan, a fellow volunteer, has family in Taiwan. They kindly invited me into their homes and took me around their beautiful country. I am so thankful for my time with them and the experiences I had. I think I can add Taiwan to my top three favorite countries! After Taiwan, my friend and I spent a few days in Hong Kong grabbing food, seeing sights, and soaking up consumerism before we headed back to Kyrgyzstan.
When we returned, all volunteers met up for our mid-service training in the capital city. We talked about what we had done the past year, or goals for next year, and got ready to take on our final year of service. After mid-service training another good friend had family in country and they took us traveling with them around the Naryn oblast. We went to two famous lakes and had fun sleeping in yurts and exploring nature. I'm thankful again for this experience. I don't know if I would have made it out to see this part of the country without their invitation.
After all this, it was already the end of June. Woah, the summer was going by fast! I tried to get students excited about coming to English Clubs over the summer but no one was showing up. I think since I wasn't new and exciting this year, students wanted to stay at home and sleep-in. Luckily, three volunteers and I had written our GLOW grant. This kept us busy organizing, planning, purchasing supplies, etc. In July we held a training for the volunteers and their counter parts. In August we hosted our camp.
Our Issyk-Kul GLOW 2016 camp was held from August 1st to the 6th in a village on the south shore. The camp consisted of 35 participants from the Oblast between the ages of 13 and 17. It also included four peer leaders, three camp counselors, four counterparts, and five volunteers. Shout out to all the volunteers for their hard work! Participants came from Balykchy, Baet, Cholpon-Ata, Karakol, and Keytai.
Issyk-Kul had 22 sessions through the week and covered topics such as self-esteem, Dance4Life, goal setting, finding their passions, peer pressure, UN Women's One World, body myths, volunteerism, leadership, and lesson planning. Also included this year were sessions that helped the girls explore their creative sides (art hour), as well as providing them the opportunity to meet role models in their communities who are good female leaders. Almost all sessions were taught by peer leaders or camp counselors, with more sensitive topics carried out with the help of a volunteer or by a volunteer and counterpart.
Besides logistics, gathering supplies, the exchange of money, and scheduling, the camp is largely peer driven. Participants at camp who demonstrate great leadership skills and good teaching techniques back in their community can be chosen to be peer leaders at the next year's camp. This year we wanted the camp to be even less volunteer lead and developed the role of camp counselor. Camp counselors are those who were peer leaders the year before and now have a role in organizing or leading events and giving more lessons. This year we had a wonderful leadership group of seven girls from Balykchy and Karakol who made this camp great!
Girls will now go back to their respective villages and teach six lessons from camp to their peers. In November we will meet again to share teaching experiences and remember the good times at camp. Thanks to everyone who worked hard on this project! It was a great success and Issyk-Kul now has 35 more female leaders in its midst.
After camp I took some time to recuperate and then helped with a Volleyball camp hosted by a fellow volunteer. At this camp girls learned or practiced playing volleyball in the afternoons while mornings were filled with lessons on anti-bullying, puberty, and healthy lifestyles (to name a few).
Soon it was the end of August and school started September 1st. While the schedule was still being worked out, I took the weekend to attend the World Nomad Games. These games are inspired by nomadic cultures from Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and another country in this area. However, countries all around the world have similar games (and nomadic histories) and are sent to compete. This was a great experience to learn more about Kyrgyz nomadic culture but also to support my fellow volunteers who were playing for team USA. So awesome!
Currently, my schedule has settled and I am starting classes and clubs again. This year I am teaching two 11th grade classes (equivalent to our 12th grade), one 6th grade, and one 5th grade. On top of my classes and clubs I am working on teacher trainings for my city this year with my site mate. We will have a lot of planning and work with our counterparts. It should be great to help other teachers in our city and share the knowledge. I also hope to start my library trainings soon in Bishkek. I'll write a post about this when it begins.
So far so good! I'm off to a great start to my second school year and things are going good. Speaking of good, I have a little story I'd like to share. It made me smile the other day:
Yesterday, we called together our first GLOW club meeting to watch the video of our camp, reflect on camp and the lessons we learned, and plan our 6 lessons the girls will give to their peers. Almost always, peer trainings are the idea of a volunteer or other authoritative figure. Someone else comes up with the idea, organizes, and helps the students prepare. Peer trainings are hardly ever youth initiated or planned. Until yesterday.
As the peer leaders and camp counselors were helping the campers pick dates and organize their trainings, one camp counselor and peer leader turn to me and explain that while GLOW ends in November, they want to give HIV/AIDS trainings on World Aids Day in December. Now, they had not talked about this at all with me and I hadn't heard any gossip about it in our WhatsApp group. My heart jumped! These girls who have been giving trainings with our (volunteer) help for 2 to 3 years have now taken that next step. They plan to give trainings on their own to their peers!
These young female leaders took the initiative, have a plan, and I have every confidence that they will carry out these trainings. Not only is it their idea to help share knowledge with their community, but the theme is a sensitive topic. This means they not only feel comfortable teaching to their peers, but teaching about topics that may make others in their community uncomfortable. Even if they don't end up teaching, just hearing that they had talked about it as a group and decided they wanted to teach their peers, without my help, was a great feeling. This is what Peace Corps is supposed to do right? Help transfer skills to others in the hope that they will initiate things to help their community. I got to see the benefits of my work and the work that has been started by other volunteers before me. It was an ah-ha moment!
