TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ani Bochorishvili
This Peace Corps initiative GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is annually held in a summer school / camp format aiming to empower and educate young girls in one of the rural areas of the country. The girls in the region have varied understanding of their identity and role in the society or family as a young female. The aim of the initiative is to discuss all of these ideas, opinions, or beliefs, address them in a female only environment in an open format, and inspire and empower young women to take their newly acquire knowledge, leadership skills and perspective and apply it at home in their own communities.
Peace Corps is an international organization, and our Glow Summer School team consisted of a mix of American and Georgian women. The participants were primarily from Caucasus region - Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and South-Eastern Europe. Overall, we had a nicely balanced international community gathered.
All of the trainings were highly interactive. Summer time allowed the possibility for many of them to be held in an outdoor setting in front of the building in the yard. A lot of these trainings were accompanied by ice breaker or team building outdoor games. The small number of trainings that were held indoors related to topics that are taboos in society - yet these were also held in an unconventional way in a circular sitting arrangement while everyone is sitting close to each other on the floor. In this setting, we had several discussion panels since we were aiming to foster sharing opinions and feeling comfortable with asking questions, especially when it came to discussing topics that are perceived to be taboos in a lot of societies. These topics included gender roles in families, violence, sex ed, health, nutrition, STDs, protection, fitness, hygiene, peer ed, leadership, tolerance, diversity, volunteerism, etc. Other activities included writing a letter to self, morning yoga lessons, scavenger hunts, etc. Most of the education in this international atmosphere was unconventional and highly engaging for both the participants and the Glow camp / summer school team.
- To see project outcomes, you can visit this page that shows constant updates on what individuals do after they 'take Glow home': https://www.facebook.com/GLOWGeorgia/timeline
- Article on overview of Glow camps: https://geneqgeorgia.wordpress.com/related-initiatives/glow-camp/
- Videos and pictures on the official webpage: http://www.glowgeorgia.org/glow-camp.html
I was one of the 4 full time Georgian trainers / counselors, staying at the location for 5 days. For all the major trainings, the participants were split up in 4 groups, and along with one American Peace Corps volunteer each one of us was in charge of one of these four varying groups' daily trainings, presentations, discussion panels, and other activities.