GLOWing in Winter

by Kareema.Abusaab, GAD Committee

When you think of G.L.O.W. camp you think, girls empowerment camp, which is exactly what it is. Great activities to help encourage girls to think ahead about their futures, learn about teamwork, and have lots of fun. What you don’t realize beforehand is the extraordinary experiences you have with the youth of Morocco, counter parts and fellow volunteers. A rich experience, fellow volunteer, Edrienna Thomas recommends trying out more than once during your service.

Recently, Edrienna completed her second G.L.O.W. camp in her site, Gourrama, Morocco. I was fortunate enough to speak to her about her experience. 

Last summer, Edrienna set out to start the first camp ever in her site. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do as many of you can imagine but what happened afterwards, caught Edrienna by surprise. She decided to work on a G.L.O.W. camp and soon after she began putting it together she noticed many of her community members showing gratitude. Community members on the street would stop and eagerly ask Edrienna questions about the camp. During planning of the camp, unforeseen challenges arose but, determined, Edrienna pushed through and continued on.  Shortly after, the camp took place. It's success led Edrienna to plan a second G.L.O.W. camp to bring in the New Year. This time around, her counterparts took more initiative in planning and helping out. Edrienna noticed very quickly how impactful the first camp was to the community because of their eagerness to help with the second one. Sustainability at its best!

As for me, I was also fortunate enough to also bring in the New Year while working on a G.L.O.W. camp in Kalaat M’Gouna with fellow volunteers; Rebecca Levy, Sandy Levinn, Johanna Boyle, Rebecca Mukiibi, Tarah Waters and two very special Moroccan counter parts Aicha and Latiefa. 

Rebecca Levy organized a fantastic G.L.O.W. camp filled with activities such as: self-defense workshop (thanks to fellow volunteer Sairah Jahangir’s training); goal setting; friendship bracelet making/pocket scouts; entrepreneurship; public speaking and so forth. Let’s just say some of the members of the camp cried on the last day and it was hard for me as well to fight back my tears. 

These beautiful girls impacted me as well as the camp impacting them. 

I admit, there were times when I thought "That’s it!" (After a couple of fights breaking out, I felt as though some of the girls were just there to make trouble.) Then I realized that this type of occasion doesn’t happen often. Most of the girls never have a moment like this in which they are recognized, cherished and loved, taught to think ahead and to simply have fun. Sometimes it’s hard for them to know how to act. But I believe by the end of the camp many of the girls realized how to finally get along. We noticed that some of the girls that fought earlier in the week were now sitting together during the spectat (dance party), chatting away and laughing.

Sometimes we forgot how much of an impact we can have on our community. So, if you are thinking about the best ways to help integrate in your community think no more, put together a G.L.O.W camp and you’ll see how quickly your community with glow at all the new learning experiences you have to offer.

GAD's guide to G.L.O.W. camps can be found on our google drive.

Talking About Sexual Harrasment: Amazing New Resource

Breaking the Silence About Sexual Harassment: Moroccans Speak Out is ready!

What Is It? 

New tools for PCVs in Morocco to kick start conversation about Sexual Harassment with their communities. The whole package includes:

• Videos: A three part video featuring Moroccans talking about sexual harassment was produced by GlobalGirl Media in partnership with the GAD Committee. This is a video by Moroccans, for Moroccans. Each part is about 10 minutes long and you can easily show it in three parts or all at once.
• Toolkit: Discussion questions and activities to accompany the video.
• Posters: Want to publicize your screening? We've got posters available for you to put up.
• Music: Original music composed especially for this video! MP3 files and lyric sheets are available.

Resources are in Arabic, English and French.

How Do I Get It?

Of course you are wondering "How do I get my hands on these amazing resources?" The Peace Corps library in Rabat has bound, hard copy toolkits and DVDs aplenty. You can take one for your own use and if you know of any associations or organizations that might use them, grab a copy for them too.

The USBs, containing all the resources in electronic format, are slightly fewer in number so you need to check them out of the library and promise to return them so we can have them available for those who come after you.

The resources are also available online on GAD Maroc Google Drive.

What Do I Do With It?

The toolkit guides you through showing and using the resources in your community. After you show the video, please let us know how it goes. What worked, what didn't? What could be better? We want this to be a resource for some time to come and the PCVs who come after you will benefit from your experience. Email us with your feedback. 

Who Made This Video?

This video is an amazing initiative with participants from Morocco, the international NGO GlobalGirl Media, the PC Morocco GAD Committee and oodles of PCVs and PC Staff in Morocco. Moroccan women from GlobalGirl Media drove the project from start to finish, creating a project that is truly "By Moroccans, for Moroccans."

Watch it, use it.

New Toolkit! Talking About Violence Against Women

Two important days are coming up that give Peace Corps Volunteers the perfect opportunity to discuss the global problem of violence against women.

• International Men's Day is November 19 and a great opportunity to engage men in the important work of eliminating violence against women.

• International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is November 25. Last year, to encourage participation in International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon reminded the world: "Millions of women and girls around the world are assaulted, beaten, raped, mutilated or even murdered in what constitutes appalling violations of their human rights...We must fundamentally challenge the culture of discrimination that allows violence to continue. On this International Day, I call on all governments to make good on their pledges to end all forms of violence against women and girls in all parts of the world, and I urge all people to support this important goal." 

As PCVs in Morocco, we can help support ending violence against women. Engage with men, boys, women, and girls in your site with GAD's brand new Violence Against Women (VAW) Toolkit! Through this toolkit participants will discuss domestic violence and be empowered to help end the cycle of violence. 

Artisan Camp in Tameslouht: Keeping Girls in Touch with Traditional Moroccan Crafting

By Sarah Quinn, PCV

Why are younger women less interested in traditional crafts and what can we do to change that?

This was the question that ultimately led to our Artisan Camp in Tameslouht this summer.

Our plan: for 10 days approximately 40 young women (late teens to early 20s) would work on learning traditional Moroccan crafts directly from artisans themselves: Fesi embroidery, 3la 7sab embroidery, crochet, or basket embellishment. Thanks to a grant through World Connect, we even had funding to cover the many necessary supplies.

In addition to learning and practicing the crafts, we planned workshops, led by both PCVs and local community leaders, to put traditional crafts into a 21st century context—topics included marketing, color theory, accounting…all of those business-y things that are so important this day in age for both product development and selling.

The last day would be an open house for the young women’s moms, an opportunity to bring the women of the community together and celebrate their daughters’ hard work.

As all PCVs know, the best laid plans usually don’t go as planned. So when it turned out that the group of campers who showed up numbered 75, not 40, and were in the 10-12 year old age range rather than the 16-25 age range, we had some re-organizing to do. Like scrapping our intensive workshop on bookkeeping.

No worries though: the girls embraced crafting whole-heartedly. And the workshops, adjusted for the audience, were wonderful.

First up was Returned PCV Heather from Mushmina and Kenza, one of the artisans she works with. They talked to the girls about product development and how their amazing company started from just a simple idea. After their presentation, the girls drew personality webs and jotted down all of the adjectives that they would use to describe themselves.

Other workshop leaders included Naima Kassi, a clothing designer from Marrakech, Hassania Ayoubi, a university student studying Human Development, Abdelatif Jâaidi, the President of the Associations’ Space of the El Haouz province, and Naima Wahmane, an artist from Amizmiz, Malika Kassi, a representative from the High Atlas Foundation, two representatives from the Moroccan Ministry of Artisana, and lastly, Zakia Lemerini, the president of the Gueliz commune and the president of the Nakhla Association for Women and Children.

On days without workshops, the afternoons were dedicated to watching the “You Can Dream” video, having a recycled-goods Project Runway, designing a mural, and lots of games. And when a planned for speaker didn’t show up? The girls grabbed their materials and jumped back into crafting without being asked. 

Of course no camp is complete with a closing party. On the final day, moms and younger siblings came to celebrate, see their fruits of their daughters’ labor, and meet the camp leaders. Zakia spoke about being treated differently than her brothers growing up, but not letting this taste of inferiority define her life. She chose to study a male-dominated field, geology, that left her spending nights by herself in the mountains. After all of this, she said, I didn’t turn out badly– I still got married, I still had kids, I still was able to do all of those tasks that so traditionally define women. At the same time, I was able to continue my career as a geologist, become a college professor, become the president of the Gueliz commune, and start an association for women and children.

This message seemed to crop up throughout the camp, both directly and indirectly– not necessarily that these girls should buck the system and never get married and define their lives by their careers, but that they should be able to have the skills and the confidence to make that choice if they wanted to. For those who do make that choice, traditional crafts are a potential income-generating activity that doesn’t really require women to leave the house. Working on Fesi embroidery can be accomplished in one’s pajamas, watching TV. It’s a ridiculously simple and effective model for women who either want to or have to get married and stay home with their kids.

But artisan skills, the original goal of the camp, almost became of secondary importance when we saw how positively the girls responded to the strong, independent, successful women who led workshops throughout the 10 days. Some of these women managed to play the traditional role of wife and mother while doing something 110% for themselves, whether it was working for Mushmina, like Kenza, or starting an association, like Zakia. Others, like both Naimas, Malika, and Hassania, are unmarried and spending their time pursuing something that they find to be of value, both to themselves and to society. Meanwhile, our girls were learning to think creatively, solve problems independently as they arose within their work, to recognize opportunities for them to step up as leaders, and to have the confidence to take that crucial step.

And thus, certificates were handed out, tears were shed, and we closed out the camp with lots of the adorable girls asking when the next camp would be. That’s probably a good sign.

To learn more about Sarah’s camp, and to see a bunch more adorable pictures, read the full post on her blog.

VOTE! 2013 Theme Contest Part Deux!

Earlier this year, due to the popularity of 2012's theme contest, we decided to create two theme contests for 2013.  For the first half of 2013, you voted for the 5k Run & Fun Walk toolkit. Many volunteers and even more Moroccans tied their laces and took off with this toolkit, and the GAD committee appreciates everyone's enthusiastic participation.  Expect a finalized version of the toolkit by early October.

The theme for the second half of 2013 is being chosen now – BY YOU! You proposed many amazing ideas and the GAD committee selected five different theme ideas for YOU TO VOTE ON (available on the website and facebook)! And as always, we want your input. If you have another idea, pass it along so that it can be included in the 1st round of themes for 2014. Don’t delay, voting ends Sept 10th!  Click the link below to vote.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1uRCVIx5wdvViS-GKO3uC-CLeb4-IugqH74FQnlJgftE/viewform

GAD at Camp

Ouled Teima

At the Ouled Teima summer camp (Souss-Massa-Drâa region) PCVs Johanna Boyle and Caitlin Stechschulte utilized the Picture Perspective activity in the new GAD at Camp toolkit.

This activity challenges participants to analyze gender roles and stereotypes in society and how they influence perceptions as well as encourages participants to reflect on their own gender roles and opportunities.

For the activity, each participant received a selected magazine clipping that was purposefully gender neutral (ie identifying body parts that associate the person as being male or female were not included) and they were directed to complete the picture with the materials provided.  Everyone appeared to really enjoy the activity and some great discussion ensued about the pictures that they created and gender roles within Moroccan society.

Zaio

Far north in the Rif region, PCVs Courtney Haueter, Tiffany Devoy, and Meg Fowler wanted to incorporate discussions about gender into the Zaio camp's theme of building employment and job seeking skills for young adults. It turns out that with just a few tweaks to the original discussion questions, the You Can Dream video is a great springboard for talking about entrepreneurship as well as women in nontraditional fields of work. Both the men and the women participating in camp found lots to talk about after watching the video and it sparked an interesting conversation around what is appropriate work for women and how camp participants view taking risk and striking out on your own versus striving for more secure employment.

These are just two examples of great GAD-related work done by PCVs in the field this summer. If you have more stories of how PCVs have incorporated GAD activities into their camps, let us know!

CPR in Region Six...and Beyond!

By Sandy Levinn, PCV
 
One fine, spring day, almost 3 weeks after I arrived in my sunny little corner of the desert, I found my mudir happily grinning down at me from the pile of rubble where our Dar Chebab had stood solidly the day before. “What happened?” I gasped, surprised and alarmed. “We are renovating the Dar Chebab,” quoth he, excited to the point of giggling. “It will be closed until August, or perhaps October. I’m thinking of taking a temporary job at the Commune; what will you do?”

And so, three weeks into my service and already out of work, I remembered a ToT that I had attended in Tinghir the week before. The topic was CPR and First Aid, and it was led, in English, by Nurin, a COS-ing health volunteer. The participants were 6 Moroccan students with good English, and the idea was to provide them with first aid skills, which they would then translate into Darija and teach in their communities. The first aid portion of the session was long and language intensive, but the group brightened as soon as we began teaching CPR. CPR is engaging, hands on, and highly demonstrable. Despite the serious application of the subject matter, everyone had fun practicing on each other and our makeshift dummies and – even better! – we were confident that everyone understood exactly what we were teaching. Recalling this trifecta of easy information transfer, important and applicable subject matter, and entertaining practical evaluation, I decided to go for it myself.

Once I made that decision, I very quickly booked myself a CPR tour of some local PCV sites, motivated by a combination of restlessness in my site (where I was assured at every turn that I would not have work until the fall) and simple convenience. If I was accompanying 50 youths from Alnif to participate in the 5k Rose Festival kick-off race in Kelaat Magouna anyway, why not stay an extra day or two and teach some CPR? If I was already going to be on the road, why not visit my friend and CBT-mate in Goulmima and commandeer his youth for a little life-saving lesson? If I was going to be out there anyway, why not extend the offer to my friends in Tinjdad and, just down the road, Nimro? I left most of the work to my hosts: they communicated with organizations in their sites, made arrangements for locations, found me my audience, and provided the requisite three 2-liter Coke bottles that would serve as our dummies. All I had to do was come up with a curriculum and teach it!

Once I had everything all set and translated (after an eleventh hour translation meeting with some of the original youth from Nurin’s ToT to check my work and a quick little broken taxi detour), I left my completely unfurnished house and began what ended up being both the most terrifying and most exciting week of my service to date. My first class was to be for a women’s association in a douar outside of Kelaat Magouna; what we did not know was that this was to be the first meeting of the association, beginning with some lengthy bureaucratic discussion and capping out at over 50 women in one tiny little room. When the time finally came for me to speak, it only took a few words to make it clear that I did not have a very good handle on the Darija, and nor did the women. Fortunately, we had an English teacher present, so I led my first class in English with Tamazight translation generously provided by the teacher. This doubled the length of the class, and after their long preliminary meeting, the women were anxious to get home. There were too many of them for

individual practice with the Santa-hat-clad teddy bear that was our infant dummy, nor was there enough space for them to practice the Heimlich on each other. Most of their questions were about nosebleeds, not CPR. My advice to call for help before beginning CPR (the most important step!) was met with laughing assurances that the ambulance would not arrive to their bumpy little douar for several hours, if at all. The Darija reference handout I had made was politely made available to the Tamazight-speaking, possibly illiterate women. It was a bit of a struggle to consider that first class a success, but it was a place to start.

After that, I revised my curriculum. Rather than read off a script, I focused on remembering key vocab words with the script as my security blanket off to the side. The Darija handout now has diagrams. I rearranged the content so that the Heimlich came first, and CPR was introduced as a solution in the event that choking led to unconsciousness (choking and drowning are the circumstances in which CPR is most likely to be successful without professional assistance and an AED). The next class, with about twenty older youth at the Dar Chebab, went much more smoothly, right up until the part when one of the students asked what they should say if their patient died and the police wanted to take them to jail. From this, I gained the painfully obvious insight that it is important to research the local laws before embarking on a project that may be illegal. Fortunately, when I arrived for my class in Goulmima (at this point seriously doubting whether I should continue teaching CPR at all), I was met by a member of the Red Crescent who thoroughly combed through my whole curriculum before allowing the class to begin. With my most sincere hamdullah to date, I gratefully confirmed that, as long as I was CPR certified and not actually certifying anyone else, there was no legal obstacle for me to continue with my tour. As we were leaving that class, my Red Crescent friend was discussing the possibility of forming a health club.

In Tinjdad, my first group was young enough that I felt uncomfortable teaching them CPR. Instead, Dan Wood taught an English lesson on body parts, and we followed that up with a simple demonstration of the Heimlich and a discussion about how to make an effective phone call to emergency services. The next day, I worked with an intimate group of just 6 beautiful women from a nearby sewing cooperative, and then with a larger group of women at the Dar Taqafa in the afternoon. I could not have asked for a better final day; the women were attentive and all showed a good understanding of the material through both verbal and practical demonstrations. I finally had the presentation down well enough that the Darija felt relatively natural, and the women helped each other understand my clumsy accent and stumbling tongue. No one suggested that anything I did or said might be illegal, and as I left I was approached by an association president who wanted a CPR class for his constituents as well. All told, we reached 158 women and youth (calculations brought to you by my trusty VRF!).

I returned to my site to find that my counterparts were jealous (in spite of their previous insistence that there was no space for me to work until October) and my CPR certification was about to expire. I contacted my Red Crescent friend from Goulmima about possible recertification, and was disappointed to hear that the Red Crescent will not certify Americans. They might give me an attestation that I had attended the class, he suggested, but it would not necessarily amount to the same thing. This meant not only that I could not teach CPR in my site, but also that no other volunteers without up to date CPR certification could use the (updated and completely legal!) curriculum I had developed to reach their communities. When I expressed my frustration to my parents, my chief-of-the-ambulance dad said simply, “I could certify them.”

This brings us to the present day. My parents are here! In Morocco! With me! Just two days after they stepping off the plane they are ready to lead an American Heart Association approved CPR certification course for 39 PCVs and a handful of LCFs using a very Peace Corps blend of mandated AHA materials and recycled soda bottle dummies. They are cheerfully donating vacation time and resources so that we can reach more people in more remote towns with skills that, ensha’allah, they will never have to use. If the need arises, however, they may well save someone’s life.