Who Runs the World?! GIRLS!

Christine and I sporting our GLOW Camp t-shirts!

Uhuru Academy finished it's first full year in November and shortly following we invited our students and their friends, along with other girls from the community, to attend our life skills camp in December. It was called GLOW Camp (Girls Leading Our World)! This camp was a jam-packed version of the life skills club we teach during the school year at Uhuru Academy called GLOW Club. The goal of GLOW Club is to enrich the students with knowledge they would not receive in the classroom but essential to living a well-rounded and educated life. Through these lessons, they become educated on social, personal, and economic issues that they can then share with their peers and communities, enabling them to be leaders! The theme of this camp as you can see from the title was based on the song by Beyonce, "Who Runs the World? GIRLS!" During this camp, Uhuru Child was also hosting a volunteer team of college students from Colorado who helped direct and lead the camp. 

This camp lasted for 5 days with 3 of those days being lesson days. The lessons included: peer pressure, communication skills, decision-making skills, goal-setting, love and sex, HIV/AIDS biology, facts and myths, and prevention, and more! In each of these lessons games and activities were involved to get the students participating, having fun, and thinking critically. 

 Trying to put a puzzle together using different types of communication

 Volunteers teaching and assisting

 Christine teaching

In the afternoons, we had activities such as crafts (christmas ornaments, hair ties, decorating shoes, journal covers, etc) , sports (volleyball and soccer), baking (cakes in a coffee mug), and tie dying GLOW camp t-shirts! These activities were a huge success with many of them never having made a chocolate cake before now, never tie dying a shirt before, and filling the air with glitter and glue during crafts!

 Decorating journals with Kenyan Kitenge fabric

Thinking of the perfect tie-dye design before putting the rubberbands on

 Tie-Dying T-shirts!

 Cake Baking with Christine

During the evenings we had events such a movie night, bonfire, and talent show! We were going to have a carnival one night but the weather did not cooperate. These events further allowed the girls to experience new things, build closer relationships with the new girls, and just have fun! 

During the bonfire, many learned to make a smore for the first time and some had their very first MARSHMALLOW! It was fun seeing some of their reactions in the beginning and questioning our taste, to how they changed after they actually ate one! They loved them! 

Showing off her first roasted marshmallow!

Enjoying the food and fun with the volunteers

The talent show was quite an experience as well with the different talents consisting of modeling and A LOT of dancing! The volunteer team even got up and taught the students a dance everyone loves in the states called the "wobble." Needless to say, everyone was enjoying themselves and the girls always love learning new dance moves.

On the last day, the girls received a certificate of participating and completion of GLOW Camp that should empower and motivate them to take their knowledge to their communities and share it! They are certified peer educators :)

GLOW Camp felt like it happened in a minute and sleeping in the same building as 25 teenage girls was fun but very tiring! However, we can now say the first annual Uhuru Academy GLOW camp was a success and will hopefully be continued this year with an influx in attendance and knowledge obtained that will lead to our students impacting this next generation in a positive and powerful way!

Lookin' fancy in their TIE-DYE GLOW CAMP SHIRTS!