Actively molding young minds: Inspiring world change through Camp GGLOW

Last week, we Nkwanta Peace Corps volunteers participated in one of the most rewarding events of Peace Corps—Camp GGLOW. Each of us chose five junior high school students from our villages and met in Nkwanta for a 4-day workshop/camp event. It was an incredible week.


For most kids in this area, finishing school is a doable, if difficult task. For some it is nearly impossible, and for most it’s incredibly more difficult than it should be. Education is not free. The Ghana Education Service may say it is, but fees trip up families at every turn. There are uniform fees, test fees, extra class fees, supply fees, even end-of-term exam fees. Many attitudes toward education are reminiscent of America fifty years ago—children’s labor is needed for the farm; there are no opportunities so education is irrelevant; or just basic devaluing of education. Yet the biggest obstacle remains to be the money. Even if they can afford the fees, it is a struggle from term to term, and sacrifices are made by everyone as financial support may not come only from the parents. Money concerns keep the parents from enrolling their children, but the students’ attitude obstacles are many more, especially when they hit the junior high age. Many don’t see school as beneficial to them or just want to spend their time helping their households generate income. Or they just plain aren’t responsible kids and neglect their school work. Many don’t make goals for their lives, or at least have no idea how to achieve them. Girls are coerced into sex too early and get pregnant—all too often by their own teachers. Girls’ education is passed over in favor of their brothers’ education because they can only afford to send one. The pitfalls are many, but so are the inspirations. Camp GGLOW is an opportunity to take 5 serious and high-performing students and show them that succeeding is possible and to not give up. I don’t know whether the five students I took were at risk for not moving on to senior high school, but I hope now they realize that any of the sacrifices they make will be worth it. I also found 5 new friends.

I thought it would be best if I had the teachers choose which students they thought deserved to go to such an extracurricular event. In many cases they chose high performing students who were already in leadership positions chosen by their fellow students. I told the two bigger junior high schools to recommend a boy and a girl and I told the smaller one to choose one girl.

Mark is one of those tall giants who doesn’t live up to his size. He is a reserved and quiet boy of about 16 and unfailingly polite. He doesn’t offer long explanations easily when directly asked, but participates well in class discussions. His family lives in Pibilla, a super tiny village about 7 miles from Damanko. There is a primary school there, but if kids want to continue with school, they must traverse those seven miles by foot or by bike to school everyday. Mark is lucky that he is able to stay with his brother in Damanko for many of the school days.

Enam is the daughter of the head nurse in Damanko. In fact, she says that she wants to become a nurse when she is finished with school—a popular profession with many kids. She enjoys sports too. She is on her school’s girls’ football team, and while at camp, took any opportunity to play volleyball or frisbee or even Capture the Flag.

Ama is still a bit of a mystery. She is very quiet and tends to blend into a crowd very well—so well that I had to search many faces closely before I could find her. She is a very serious student; her teachers tell me she never misses school, a quite rare ability.

Ebenezer is my performer of the group. He is a powerfully-built kid with broad shoulders, a short stature, a sharp mind and affable personality with a knack for telling stories. His lack of shyness makes him a defacto leader of any group, something he handles easily.

Rafia was my pleasant surprise. My only student from the English-Arabic Muslim school, she was my dark horse. When I first met her, I could barely hear her speak and she seemed bewildered easily. Over the weeks before camp she visited me often, but still did not speak much or loudly. Often in school, unless the girl is exceptionally bold, we have to encourage them specifically to speak, because the boys like to take over and the girls tend to let them. I watched Rafia a lot, trying to find what piqued her interest. She was very attentive during all our sessions, but seemed on the edge of her seat during the ICT lessons and during PCV Raj’s impromptu one during free time, she was there in small group surrounding his screen. She even knew many of the answers to the ICT questions, though I’m sure she had never handled a computer until camp. Rafia’s got a voice too. During Thursday night’s talent show where we let the kids showcase whatever they could do, Rafia got up and sang a song in Arabic all on her own. She did it again the next night when we did cultural dancing. She sings very very well. At camp I saw a whole new side, and she blew my mind more than a little when she announced she dreamt of becoming a pilot. I think I found my girl.

The camp is a weird mix between a semi-professional workshop and American campy-ness. We tried to keep it from being too much like a workshop by inserting activities like tie-dying t-shirts and playing Capture the Flag. We had sessions about “Life Skills” which is a major point of emphasis for Peace Corps—teaching kids how to make good decisions and stay out of trouble and to keep their eyes on their goals. We brought in a lot of professional people to talk about a variety of subjects—gender equality, health, HIV/AIDS, wildlife conservation, etc—not only to expose them to issues not talked about in school, but also to show them the variety of professions people have even in their own backyards.

We held the camp in the “medical village” which is basically a campus for the hospital in Nkwanta. It has a large space, a conference room, some dorm space for the kids to sleep in, and bungalows for us. Dr Tony, the director of the hospital, led a session on HIV/AIDS. HIV is surprisingly not a big issue in Ghana, with a prevalence rate of only 2%, and most kids get plenty of HIV education in school. Because we were able to supply computers and a projector for this event, plus a highly educated doctor, Dr Tony was able to show them clinical pictures of many of the opportunistic infections that affect AIDS patients which the kids have never seen before.

Selorm came from one of the NGOs in town to talk about gender equality, something the kids intuitively understand, but rarely see. Fuseini from nearby Kyabobo National Park was invited to talk about his work and the kids’ reaction was very interesting. The idea of conservation and protected animal species flies a good six feet over their heads. Cultural mentality is that animals are here for us to use or eat, because surely they would do the same to us, and setting up a system that protects the natural processes and lifestyles of animals seems odd and useless. All week they had been absorbing really well all of the things we were giving them, but this concept eluded them.

The highlight of our guest speakers was Grace, one of our Ghanaian Peace Corps staff. She may be responsible for only the training of new PCVs, but her passion is really working with youth, especially young girls. She has one of those truly rags-to-riches stories that makes everyone sit up and take notice. She runs all of the training for Peace Corps Ghana, has a master’s degree, and is highly respected by everyone, but like some of the students, she came from a rural village, was told not to go to school because educating girls was a waste of time and money, and struggled to make ends meet the whole time.

We had a theme for our camp—Leadership Around the World. As Peace Corps volunteers we know that one of the best things we can do in these communities is just to show the world outside of their villages, outside of Ghana, so that’s what we tried to do. We showed Planet Earth during lunch breaks, did small presentations on countries or regions of the world. We had a globe and a world map and hammered some geography into them because maps are something they rarely see and most cannot do more than point out Ghana on the map. We made sure they knew the continents and even went as far as naming the planets.

The evenings were the most entertaining. The first night, since we had the benefit of our computers, a projector, and the vast PCV digital library (that is spread among everyone’s hard-drives) we showed a couple animated movies. The first night was Megamind, the second, How to Train Your Dragon. Both went over really well because they’re full of action and funny mannerisms. Ghana has its own movie industry and a lot of influx from Nigeria, but they rarely, if ever, see American animated films. On Thursday, we had a talent show which most kids used as a platform for singing or dancing or telling stories. Little Bernard shocked everyone with his animal noises, and another boy with his break-dancing.

It seemed like the event was a success; everyone bonded well, was active, and seemed to have a good time. I sincerely hope, though, that at least a couple of my kids feel better and more hopeful about their future, because really, they have their whole lives ahead of them and they can become and do anything. I hope to use these five kids and Camp GGLOW as a spring board for some other things. I’m sure they’ll want to start an ICT club, knowing now that I have a computer. I want to try and start a girls’ club with Ama, Rafia, and Enam and ask them to invite the friends they know are having trouble, so we can use the Camp GGLOW tools to help them. It’s all about paying it forward.