Tuesday, September 14, 2010

BRO Camp

Part of being poor, is staying put. When you have limited resources traveling is pretty low priority. If you don’t travel then you probably also always sleep in your own house. Last February me and two other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) were in a gym getting huge and talking about the value of camps that PCVs occasionally put together to take kids out of their communities for a few days and teach them a thing or two while giving them an experience to spend their first night out of the community (not all have never left but the majority). The female volunteers have been holding a girls camp several times a year called ‘GLOW’ camp and we decided we should have a BRO camp to teach about Machismo, what it means to be a man, and STDs. We applied to one NGO for funds and were rejected, but then we applied for VAST funds and were awarded 1000 dollars to hold a camp. VAST funds are allotted to fight HIV/AIDS and all we had to do was teach a little more AIDS education than we had originally planned. We invited a total of 8 PCVs to attend from all sides of the country and to bring 4 boys between the ages 13-16. Together there were 40 of us. This was the 4th camp I have been to. We held it in the workers center on Lago Coatepeque (which is amazing) for two nights three days. In addition to all the educative material was included a mini soccer tournament, bonfire with S’mores, and just lots of fun. The boys were all amazingly well behaved; I can not convey how good these kids are especially the boys I brought. I was so proud of how well they handled everything including the guest speaker (a man who has been living with HIV for 10 months) and one of their parents got all choked up when I told her how proud she should be of her son.

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