Camp Glow and 527 Contest

Recently I just conducted a 3-day camp for girls of the 9th and 10th grade. The theme was Women's Empowerment. We had 13 girls show up, 3 PCVs and 4 Ukrainian helpers.

Day 1: Self-Esteem/postive body image

Day 2: Healthy Relationships/communication

Day 3: Female leaders/empowerment

Here Luda points out the differences between two pictures, one with photoshop and one without. This lesson was to demonstrate that photoshop can easily "take away imperfections" and make models look perfect, but in reality, they are just beautiful women that probably never needed "touching up".

Here, Jenny has a discussion with the students about female leaders/role models. Megan Fox claims to be a role model, but an atypical one. She may drink alcohol, smoke and use bad words, but she will teach your daughter to be independent, speak out against wrongdoings, and stand up for what she believes in.

Camp Song time! "Let me see your funky chicken!"

My Ukrainian friend Valentina gave an interesting presentation about finding love. She teaches to students that they need "to find themselves" before "finding the one".

Alona and Mary did a super hilarious advertisement about a drink. (beer maybe?) Alona is the ocean in this picture and Mary is the costumer who will soon be enjoying a nice drink on the beach. This activity included several different magazine advertisements, some of them actually showing what they were advertising (this one!) and others simply using female or male bodies to sell their product. Interestingly enough, the students misunderstood an Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement for being a fitness center advertisement. hehe.

Speaking against advertisements that make women feel competitive and needing to put on tons of make up and use photoshop to feel beautiful!

Giving compliments to each other to boost our self-esteem!

Here, students are demonstrating a skit in which a neighbor woman can hear child abuse in the apartment next door. Students are required to think of what the neighbor woman can do to help or stop the situation.

In this situation, a young neighbor child tells you that there is no food in her house. What can you do? These girls smartly thought that we need to first find out the whole situation. Are they bad parents or just poor?

How to handle a situation when your friend tells you that she is pregnant.

What should you do when your boyfriend is pressuring you to have sex?

Crossing the River Activity: Papers are used as stones to "cross a river". Once you go across, you can't go back. Three people are also blindfolded!

Organization game: Without touching the ground, one must get in order of youngest to oldest.

In this game, the students must move a cup full of water out of the circle without entering the circle or moving the box the cup is on. The only materials they have is string, paperclips, and tape.

Having a discussion about powerful women. :-)

Conor talks about Gender Stereotypes and equality.

The Matrix!!!

Blindfold Maze Walk!

Relay Race!

Over the rope: Ukrainian Style: (A Napkin in place of actually stepping on Alina's pants)

527 Poster Contest!

527 is a free hotline for Ukrainians that they can call if they want to work, live, or study abroad. All they need to do is give the number the info for where they will go and the 527 volunteers will find out if it is safe or not. This number is to help prevent the trafficking of Ukrainians.

The winning poster!!! (3D!!!!)

:-) Comments are appreciated!

PEPFAR Training

Back to School.

We are back to school now after a week long training for HIV/AIDS: PEPFAR training. My student Alina and my fellow English teacher, Lydia, attended the training with me and they were great! I met them at the train station in Kiev since it was their first time in the Capital and then we headed to the bus stop where my organization met and transported all the training participants.

The training was held at a Sanatorium…like a summer resort for children/adults who have health problems. We each had one roommate in our rooms. My roommate was another Peace Corps volunteer and Alina and Lydia roomed together. The trainings were tough. Every day, we were up by 8am and in training by 9am. The trainings lasted all day until about 7 or 8pm every evening with only 2 coffee breaks, lunch and dinner.

As a PCV, (Peace Corps volunteer), I have done these trainings several times, but it was really powerful to see my Ukrainian counterparts learning so much and being swept up in the feeling of knowing they were being empowered to help their country.

The first day we learned about the biology of HIV/AIDS and the stages. We learned that HIV is the virus and AIDS (the complete collapse of the immune system) is only a result of HIV, but not actually a disease. We also learned that a person is most contagious in the first 6 months after contracting HIV, yet in these same months, an HIV test will show that they are negative.

After biology, we learned about transmission. There are four body fluids that HIV can transmit through: 1) Blood; 2)Semen; 3)Vaginal fluid;4) Breast Milk, (in order of concentration!).

Places and fluids that HIV/AIDS CANNOT spread through are:
Swimming pools
Hugs
Kisses (unless bleeding profusely!)
Saliva
Air
Sharing drinks
Hand shakes

We then studied prevention. The general teaching method of PEPFAR is the ABC teaching method.
A-Abstinence;
B-Be Faithful;
C- Condoms.
We learned that the ABC method is the most effective way to teach prevention because it gives people options. However, in Ukraine, teaching about condoms is not always allowed in schools. Our school has been lucky enough to be the only school in our town to be allowed to teach about condoms.

Lastly, we learned about stigma. All across the world there is huge stigma surrounding HIV positive people. In our stigma lesson, we had a discussion about who is guilty of their HIV+ status. As a whole, we came to the conclusion that people who make risky choices (sharing needles, unprotected sex, etc) may not be making the most responsible decisions in the world, but they still did not want their HIV+ status and therefore no one is guilty. However, we agreed that if a person knowingly spreads their HIV+ status or chooses to be ignorant about it, that is another story, and that person is guilty.

The second part of the HIV+ stigma training was about people who are already HIV+ and are progressing to AIDS. Most commonly, HIV+ people die faster if they are unhealthy and they do not have support. Unfortunately, in many countries, families are embarrassed and ashamed when they learn about their family member’s HIV+ status. In the second activity, we all had ten cards, which listed various aspects of life, including family, finances, mobility,  mental reasoning, etc. We then took away five cards of our choice and discussed how this represents a person in the first stages of AIDS. After a short discussion, we lost two more cards except this time we could not choose. We once again discussed how this represents a person with progressive AIDS and how they are more and more losing their ability to survive without support.

The training was super successful! At the end of the training, my counterparts and I planned an awesome project that we will implement in our school to spread information about HIV/AIDS. First, we will have a professional trainer come to our school and train 6 students and 19 teachers. Then, we will announce a art/photo/painting contest related to HIV/AIDS. The winning pieces will be printed in an HIV/AIDS themed calendar. On December 1st, International HIV/AIDS day, the six students leaders will train the 9th, 10th, and 11th classes. The calendars will be given out as prizes to the winning artists and the remaining calendars will be sold to support the purchase of condoms and other materials for the next year’s training. The six student trainers will choose six new students who will be the trainers for next year. The hope is that HIV/AIDS trainings will be a permanent yearly fixture in our school!

Wish us luck!!!

The Holidays!!!

Hello fellow friends in America!

I hope you had a wonderful Holiday season and received all that you hoped for!

We know that in the USA you celebrate both Christmas (25^th December) and New Year’s Day (1^st January). In Ukraine, we also have Christmas and New years but we celebrate them differently. Firstly, our Christmas is on the 7^th of January. We do not celebrate American Christmas on the 25^th of December. Ukrainian Christmas is also a little different from the American version. Our Christmas is purely a religious holiday, and non-religious people do not celebrate it. On the other hand, American Christmas is a holiday celebrated by religious and non-religious people.

Our New Year’s celebration tends to be more similar to your Christmas celebration, except for different dates of course! We celebrate New Year’s with our entire family, including aunts, uncles, grand-parents, and cousins. Everyone gathers together the night before New Year’s day and they exchange presents, have a feast together, and then watch the president’s speech on the television. The big difference between your New year’s and our New year’s is that we stay together with our family until after midnight, eating together and making toasts. A little after midnight, some younger people leave their families and meet their friends in the central location of the city, which in our town is a big Christmas tree in our square. In our square we have music and we dance around the tree. Ms. Daniela was really surprised on her first New Year’s when she was in the central square of our town at almost midnight and there were no people!

In Ms. Daniela’s class, we saw a video of the New Year’s Time Square celebration. Ms. Daniela said that in America, many people celebrate New Year’s in the same way, by having parties with there friends, and sometimes family. However, she said that even if you are with your family, it is not traditional to exchange presents or have a big feast like we do. She did say that it is traditional to KISS someone though!!!

Our Christmas is similar to how religious people celebrate Christmas in the USA. It is traditional to remember the story of the birth of Jesus Christ through reading or acting. We also go to Church on Christmas and sometimes we exchange small presents, (not always though, since we can not always afford to give presents on New Year’s and Christmas). 

In Ukraine, we also celebrate the Old New Year, which is the 14th of January. It is tradition for boys to knock on their neighbor's doors very early in the morning, (3-5am!). When the neighbor opens the door, the boy throws rice in the doorway and then the neighbor must give their blessings to the boy for the new year, (a little present like chocolate). Because it is so early in the morning, it is okay to ignore the doorbell or knocking as long as you open the door for the first boy.

The last holiday of the season is the day of baptism, on the 19th of January. This day is by far the craziest holiday. It is tradition on this day to go to the nearest water where there is a cross cut into the ice and "baptize" yourself by dunking into the water three times. This holiday is mainly dominated by men but some women also go. Sometimes groups go to the banya after this. The banya is a hot room where the air is about 125 degrees (~255 degrees Fahrenheit). Compared to the commonly known "sauna", a Russian banya is "wet" or steamed, while a sauna is traditionally dry. (Below is Johanna, a German volunteer in a traditional banya-hat to protect the head from the heat!)

We'd love to hear about your holidays!