Estrellas de Hoy Stars of Today

One benefit of hand-washing clothing is that it certainly gives you time to think. Your hands are busy, rhythmically repeating the same motions in the cool water, but your head is clear to roam.
One Sunday in August, I was washing and began to think of my idea for a girl’s group. Since training, I had become obsessed with the idea of starting a girls’ group. I knew that besides the church youth groups, the young people in my community had no social out-of-school time, especially the women. When they weren’t in class, they were working hard in the house. I also noticed that the women in class were often significantly more reserved and timid than the boys. They dreaded having to say anything in class or share their ideas.

As I was washing, the ideas that I had been harboring for months seemed to crystallize. During training, I had heard some other volunteers talking about girls groups they had worked with in the States that involved sports and art to encourage the girls’ expression and confidence, an idea that stuck with me. And of course my own experience lies with leading young people in community service, having spent two years in Boston as an AmeriCorps volunteer. I believe community service is the best way to teach leadership, civic engagement and critical thinking, but it is not a common concept here in Guatemala. I decided I wanted to put on a camp that incorporated all of these things: sports, art, and community service.

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without funding, especially for art supplies and a service project. This gave me a slight hang-up. I could try to seek it within the community, but I thought my chances of getting it, being so new in town, would be slim to none, and that people may not see the value of the camp (and instead just a frivolous waste of non-working time). But there was also a big population of people in the US that were very enthusiastic and supportive of my service in the Peace Corps, and I knew they would be excited to help me out. It wouldn’t be sustainable, and it wouldn’t be from my own community, which are pitfalls the Peace Corps warned us about time and again. But, I decided then, I could sit around and fret about sustainability and do nothing, or I could ask for support from home and do something new and positive for the young women in town. In that moment I made my decision. I had been tossing around the idea for a girls’ group for months, and if I really wanted this, it was time to start.
I got to work writing up my ideas, schedules and plans for activities. I made a flier to help get the word out at home and coordinating the fundraising from my parent (I asked for a modest amount from a limited number of donors). I tried speaking to some of the other local teachers and women around my age who might be interested in helping out.

In the last couple weeks of school I made presentations in all the classes in the Institute about the camp. I invited the girls to come to an information meeting if they were interested. For the first information meeting, only about 5 girls showed up, and I began to get worried (my goal was 20 participants with 4 team leaders). Once school ended, I would have no good way of contacting the potential participants. I scheduled another meeting and went back to the institute the day before to let the girls know. This time I had almost a full classroom of girls. I presented my idea once more and passed out a sign-up sheet to get their names and phone numbers. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

With my parents help, the funding was easily secured because their coworkers and family friends were very supportive, as well as many of my friends that I e-mailed. Although a few women in town had expressed interested in helping me, only one actually followed through by helping me plan a menu for snacks. I spent some of the funding and a good amount of time calling all the girls on my sign-up sheet to tell them about our first day and encourage them to come. I spent Thanksgiving weekend frantically shopping for materials and snack ingredients. I became very nervous, especially when I heard from other volunteers who had very disappointing turn-outs for their camps because of the harvest time. I decided privately that I would be happy if 5 girls showed up, and I would give those 5 girls a great camp.

On the first day, to my immense relief and joy, about 15 girls showed up, including the 4 girls I had selected to be my co-leaders.

I quickly found out that activities I planned took much longer than expected, especially the art because the girls were so meticulous, and every time we played sports, we had so much fun that we didn’t want to stop. In the first week, we only did about half the activities I had previously planned. The girls’ attendance also varied and was never as high as the first day. There was a “core” group of about 7 that came almost every day, but many girls could come only about every other day because they were needed to help at home with the harvest.

I also quickly realized that I had taken on a tremendous amount of work in trying to run a two week sports-art-community service camp on my own. The camp began at 10 every morning and run until 5, with a two hour break for lunch. Despite all the preparations I thought I had done, I was up late each night preparing the activities and supplies and writing up the guides for the team leaders. In the mornings and during the lunch breaks, I was frantically preparing the snacks (which were much more involved than the original snacks I had planned). I ran between the Institute and my house (thankfully only 5 minutes away), carting supplies, about 10 times a day. It was extremely exhausting.

I would often arrive at camp tired and frazzled, but after being around the girls just a little while, my mood would begin to shift. They never failed to energize me, and each day I was with them, I loved what I was doing. I quickly developed a relaxed and joking relationship with them, and I was impressed by the leadership that many of the girls already showed. When we played sports we had the most fun, especially when I taught them dogeball and kickball, and they tried to improve my pitiful soccer skills.

We also did more serious activities, such as community mapping and analyzing community service projects that other young women had accomplished in other communities in the world. The last day of our first week, it was time to create our own idea. I lead them in a brainstorm of what they liked and what they felt was lacking in their community. I gave them a list of 50 ideas for potential service projects and asked them to come up with some ideas in groups. Each group chose the same one: a community garden.

I probed them for why a garden was important to them. They told me that it would make their community more beautiful, give the people a sense of pride, and maybe encourage people to care for the community better and stop throwing trash on the ground. I made them choose some back-up ideas, but I could see they were very excited about the idea of a garden.
I had planned on having a week break in between week 1 and week 2, but the girls wanted to start fundraising for the garden right away. Our first idea was to hang up their art work in the community salon and invite people that were at the market to pay a small amount to come in and see their art and get a free coffee and sell snacks. We painstakingly decorated the salon and lit candles, but sadly only a few people entered the gallery, including the mayors who were trying to be nice. It was a little disheartening to see how few people were interested in helping out the girls. But all of the girls had come with snacks they had prepared at home, and we were able to sell some of the food and earn money that way.

In week 3, the girls dedicated themselves to making a life-like model of the garden, in addition to our regular sports and art activities. I had only intended this activity to be a drawing that would take one morning, but it involved into a week-long project. They carefully cut out little flowers and fences and paths from construction paper and made trees out of real tree branches and a lawn out of pine needles. The result was quite beautiful and impressive. On our last day, we decided to form a club to continue with the garden project. We elected our club leadership and made plans to meet twice a month.

Our club has been slow getting started, now that school has started and most of the girls are back to studying and a lot busier. I also have had less time to dedicate to them with all the teaching I am doing, and finding days to meet has been difficult. But we have made plans to visit some greenhouses in Xela, and they seem excited by the prospect of picking out the trees and plants that they like. I think we will get back into the momentum again. But I do miss the time when I had whole days to spend with them, laughing and joking and teasing and playing, and sometimes having more serious discussions. It was the first time I really felt like I was contributing something to my community, that there was a group of people that really cared about my presence here, and despite all the work, it was the happiest I have been here.