Camp GLOW (Girls Leading our World) Needs YOUR Help

 Two posts in a month? Say it ain't so!

This April, I, along with 9 other volunteers, will be hosting a camp for about 20 Zambian teenage girls. This camp is a week long and tackles issues such as HIV/AIDS, women’s health, female empowerment, leadership skills and career planning. We also incorporate fun sessions such as arts and crafts, playing sports, sewing sanitary pads and making camp T-shirts. We also invite female professionals in the community to talk with the girls. After the camp is over, each volunteer, our Zambian counterpart teacher and the 2 girls return to our school to begin a Girls Club. Early Marriage, teen preganacy and girls dropping out of school after grade 7 are huge issues in rural Zambia and this camp can go along way to combating this issue.

So what can you do about it? Well, I'm so glad you asked!

Camp G.L.O.W is grant-funded through Peace Corps though the majority of our funding comes from friends and family back home. 
To donate please click on this link:

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-611-008

The grant is under Perry,S. and all money donated will go directly to helping these young girls. Any amount of money, even just $5 dollars, helps. (Euros are accepted as well)

We also accept in-kind donations (care packages). During the camp we do several arts-and-crafts projects with the girls and much of the materials are very difficult to find in Zambia and basically impossible to find up-country here in Luapula. 

We are kindly requesting donations from family and friends in the states in
order to help make this camp a great success! Here’s a list of some
of the supplies that we are looking for:

-Craft supplies (beads for bracelets and necklaces, elastic string,
pipe cleaners, fabric pens, puffy paint, supplies for t-shirt
decorating, etc.) This is very much enjoyed by all the camp
participants!!!

-Sewing needles and thread
-Toiletries (soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, lotion,
combs for curly hair, sanitary pads, manicure kits)

-Notebooks, notepads and pens/pencils

-Fun accessories (headbands, hair clips, hair elastics, plastic jewelry, etc.)

-Small purses or makeup bags

-Lip gloss or nail polish

-Plain white t-shirts (mostly sized small and medium)

-Socks and underwear (size small)

-Anything you think our camp participants would enjoy!!

Mail is very slow in between US/Europe and Africa and can often take over a month to get here. If you send a package please please send it before the end of February.

Please address the package to :

Camp G.L.O.W. Luapula
c/o Hannah Lippe, PCV
Peace Corps Zambia
P.O. Box 710150
Mansa, Luapula, Zambia
AFRICA

Please, Help us make this camp a huge success for our girls, Your help can truly make a huge impact in their lives!

One year already?

Hey everyone, I’m back!  I can’t believe I haven’t updated my blog since October. It hasn’t been entirely all my fault though, our provincial house has been without wifi since Thanksgiving.  I have a lot to catch you all up on.  Here we go…

November

The main highlight was of course Thanksgiving.  It was my first Thanksgiving ever away from my family so I was a little nervous that I would get homesick but we were all so busy that there was no time for homesickness!  Thanksgiving week we had our semiannual provincial meeting, which meant that all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Luapula were in Mansa already. The day before Thanksgiving, after the meetings were over, we PCVs had our annual Thanksgiving kickball game. Kickball is definitely a game foreign to Zambia (baseball too for that matter) so we attracted a small crowd of people wondering, I’m sure, what we were up to. We spent most of Thanksgiving day cooking. I was in charge of making the stuffing.  Nobody however told me how much stuffing I was supposed to make so I  spent the entire afternoon making two industrial sized trays of stuffing.  was a stuffing-making machine.  For our for dinner we had all our Zambian staff in Luapula come as well. That meant that there were over 50 people at Thanksgiving dinner in our house.  We ran out of forks so I ended up eating Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks! Eating traditional American foods, like mac and cheese and apple pie with chopsticks was definitely an interesting experience.  I have to say though, it was a wonderful way to spend my first Thanksgiving away from home.

December

               School was out for the month long Christmas holiday.  I spent most of the month hanging out at my site and visiting a few friends. My friend, Kara (another PCV) , also came to spend a couple of days at my site  before we both traveled to Mansa for Christmas with some other volunteers- we even had a Christmas tree!  For New Years we headed down the Livingstone to see Victoria Falls. Victoria Falls is set of waterfalls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Falls are one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and spectacular.    

Also, my cat, Scout had 4 kittens  (though one died after a few days) while I was away. Watching them grow big enough to give away was great, they are so cute!

               January

               School started up again on the 14^th of January and after a month of traveling, I was definitely ready to be back at site. This term I’m going to be teaching grade 9 and grade 6 English. This year the grade 9s take their big examination which determines if they continue into grade 10 or not. No pressure right?

It’s hard to believe that I have already been in Zambia for over a year!  Where has all the time gone? Things are going to be picking up in terms of projects so I’m sure that I will have lots to share with y’all!

Until Next time!