IGLOW-IBRO BWI 2015

 

Five months ago, two other Banyuwangi PCVs (Akelia and Vanika) and Craig and I pitched a project to our schools. The project was a youth leadership camp called IGLOW-IBRO, and after a lot of planning, fundraising and coordination, our camp finally happened this past weekend. It was a whirlwind 24 hours or so, but it was a total success! A big plus was that there were no fainting spells or spirit possessions to report! Haha.

IGLOW stands for “Indonesian Girls Leading Our World.” GLOW camps are a pretty common project for PCVs in countries all over the world. Sometimes the camps include sessions on reproductive health or issues specific to young women in the community, but for our schools it was important to include boys in the camp too, so we added the IBRO (Indonesian Boys Respecting Others) component. After all, if girls are going to become world leaders, the boys have to be on board too.

The participants were 76 kids from our 4 high schools and we held the camp at Vanika’s school, MAN Banyuwangi, in the city. We invited 6 speakers to run sessions on: Religious tolerance and understanding; environmental protection; self confidence; building healthy relationships; leadership and teamwork; and setting and reaching goals. Some of the sessions we included all the participants together, and some of them we separated the boys and girls so they could be more comfortable expressing themselves and hopefully increase their participation. I think this was good because we had some displays of emotion in the boys’ sessions that might not have happened in a mixed gender group.

Candle Ceremony

We also had a movie night (Minions!) and after the movie, we held a candle ceremony where all the students went around the circle, introduced themselves and announced their dreams and goals for the future. A lot of them sais they want to be successful businesspeople so they can help provide for their parents. One girl said she wanted to become a great chef in a big city who creates her own delicious recipes, and another girl said she wants to work for the government in Jakarta and become “the only government staff who isn’t corrupt.”

Thanks to Donna for donating the water balloons!! (and special water balloon carrying pouch I used to save some ammo for myself.)

The next morning started off with a water baloon toss and a baloon fight which was fun but even though we had 200+ balloons, it was over way too soon! And isn’t that always the case with water baloons?

Camp participants fighting for the chance to ask questions to Wandra and Suliyana (left)

We continued with sessions, and then we suddenly got word that local celebrities Wandra and Suliyana were coming to our camp to help us close it out. We had to shift some of our plans, but it was awesome to see the kids go absolutely wild when Wandra and Suliyana walked in the room. One kid was called up on stage, and after he shook Suliyana’s hand he turned around, made a dramatic “thank you Allah” gesture, turned to the West and got down on his knees and prostrated in prayer. Everyone thought that was really funny. Anyway, Wandra and Suliyana were really gracious to stop by and speak and take photos with the kids even though they were exhausted.

After they left, we had our closing speaker who got the exhausted kids really excited and motivated. Then we passed out certificates and gathered in front of our banner for a big group photo. And that was it!

Camp mentors get together with their group to discuss the day’s topics.

We couldn’t have done this without our MCs (our host sister Putri and her friend Lily), our super pro-active camp mentors from local universities who showed up, took small groups of kids under their wing, and made sure they were understanding the schedule and what was happening during the speaker sessions. We also got help from our other PCV friends, Richard and Emily, who came to town to help us with the camp. For our part, we held meetings with our schools to make sure they were on board with everything, we did the fundraising and the printing and the banner design ad the certificates and the speaker coordination and we made the workbooks and did most of the other prep work, but amazingly, when we showed up to the camp, we were pretty much able to sit back and watch it all happen. And that was a great feeling.

Mentors gather with their groups to facilitate group discussions

Our sticker evaluations. Left to right: Strongly agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree

Evaluation: We had planned to have mentors conduct an informal evaluation with the participants before the closing ceremony, but Wandra and Suliyana showing up pretty much threw that plan out the window. But, it was cool to observe kids learning something in one session and then applying it in another session on a different topic. I felt like, “hey! Things are actually sticking with these kids.”What we were able to do was have kids use stickers and Likert scale posters to self-report their feelings and knowledge both before and after the camp. We had statements like, ” I understand how to practice religious tolerance,” “I feel confident speaking in public,” “I believe in myself as a leader with my peers,” and “I understand the difference between health and unhealthy relationships.”  The visual effect of the posters makes it look like the camp was very successful 🙂

We’re so grateful to everyone, both here and in the US, who helped us make this camp a success. Thank you!!!