With A Little Help From My Friends (aka YOU!)

This week (February 23 - March 1) is our annual Peace Corps Week in which members of the Peace Corps community are encouraged to share their experiences with others, back home and abroad, as a renewal of its commitment to service. This year there was even a video competition which challenged volunteers to create a short video that answered the question: What do you wish Americans knew about your Peace Corps country?

Though I didn't feel confident enough in my skills to whip up a video about Peru, I have felt much more conscious and appreciative of my Peace Corps experience this week as well as thinking about what exactly my service means to me and my community. As a way of sharing my experience with all of you back home, I have the perfect way you can get involved in a project my fellow volunteers and I are working on at the moment.

The volunteers in my region, La Libertad, in coordination with local agencies in the community will be putting on a three and a half day camp for a total of 60 adolescent boys from our sites throughout the region. The goal of the camp is to promote the "well-rounded IRONMAN" through activities in vocational orientation, future planning, volunteerism and gender equality (fighting the ever-dominant machismo).

As a female volunteer I encounter rude men whistling, smooching, calling and even hissing at me daily and I know the rest of our female volunteers do, too. Due to the lack of resources, many young people are not able to continue their education or often drop out of school to work and help support their families or resort to crime. By promoting a different mentality in the teenagers attending the camp we can help direct their attention and energy toward more positive goals and provide them with alternative opportunities to better their futures.

In order to achieve our goal we need to raise money, about $2,400 in the next month. To read more about our project and donate, follow this link. If you know anyone else who might like to support our project please forward or share this post with them. A little goes a long way here in Peru so any support is greatly appreciated!

Below are a few photos (stolen from other volunteers) from our all-girls' camp we had in September last year. I was able to bring three high schoolers from Guadalupe with me and they had a wonderful time. One of the greatest parts was being able to see the girls make friends with other girls from all over the region, from areas some of them had never even been to. When I run into the girls back in site, they still ask me when the next camp will be and to let them know as soon as I know.

Visiting the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo where the girls chatted with the dean and the head of admissions
Reppin' our team spirit. Vamos Amarillo!!
Camp leaders gettin' crazyyy
Happy Peace Corps Week!

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