¿Y Entonces...?

This weekend was one of the highlights of my service. Volunteers are able to put on projects by using grant money from different sources, and with the local NGO, ProFamilia, we put on an overnight camp for youth in the Jalapa valley: Participando Somos Mejores y Somos Vida (By Participating We Are Stronger and We Are Life).

We focused the camp on HIV (especially since the first day was the International Day of Solidarity for those who live with HIV) and First Aid. Along with the ProFamilia staff, we worked with brigadistas (community health volunteers, kind of like Red Cross) who were ROCKSTARS.

The first day of the camp, my ProFamilia counterpart and I presented a charla about basic HIV information (which the participants were already very knowledgeable about) and the numbers of HIV in Nicaragua. From there, the brigadistas presented a basic First Aid charla before the participants then broke off into groups to go to stations to learn more in-depth First Aid activities, such as types of burns, how to stabilize fractures and hemmoraging before the ambulance arrives, CPR, what to do upon arriving to an emergency situation, among a few others.

One thing that didn't go as planned was that we were going to have a woman from the shelter, Oyanka, come talk to the participants about HIV and gender violence. However, because of her absence, the brigadistas had more time to present and the participants got a more in-depth perception at each station.

After the stations, we did a little adventure run through the property we were holding the camp at. We ran across the river, up the cerro, slid DOWN the cerro, dipped under the various barbed wire fences and after about an hour, arrived back to the main area where we had dinner. After dinner, we had a "cultural night" in which the groups would do a talent show and we elected the nominees for King and Queen of the camp (I was elected!). Some groups did dancing and others did mini socio-dramas involving the information that they had learned from the brigadistas.

On day 2, we had a review session of the HIV charla the day before and I was quite impressed with what the participants remembered! After a quick break, we got new groups together and the brigadistas hosted an adventure obstacle challenge. There were several stations with a review question about what they learned in the First Aid portion of the previous day and a task that the group had to perform before moving on. Some of the ProFamilia staff and I created a team and we participated, as well. It was a blast and a half and we all had a great time.

After the challenge, we had the King and Queen of the camp eliminations...and they elected me as their Queen (after a very tough dance competition between me and the director/dentist of ProFamilia, another candidate)! We presented the participants with a certificate of completion of the camp and then brought everyone back to Jalapa.

It was a great success and I'm still flying on cloud 9 about this camp! My counterpart is already in talks of doing another activity like this for World AIDS Day in December...I'm all for it, but I'd like to survive the half marathon I'm putting on with Marvin first :)

There were LOTS of pictures taken over the weekend. I created an album (I didn't want to post 80 pictures in one blog post!) that you can find and enjoy HERE!