Camp VALOR

The whole gang of campers and volunteers

First of all, a HUGE thank you to everyone who donated and helped fund this awesome leadership camp for high school boys. On behalf of myself, my fellow volunteers, and most importantly the 40 young leaders who came to camp last weekend, we very much appreciate your support and we could not have done it without you!

Jess and I with the six Cajabamba campers

Me and the two boys (Franck and Wilson) I brought from one of my savings bank classes

Thanks to the support of our donors and a lot of hard work by the Cajamarca volunteers, Camp VALOR was a great success. We started off Thursday night with pizza dinner and a whole lot of ice-breakers to get the boys into the spirit of camp. These games are our way of getting the campers to break out of the nervousness of traveling to a new city and meeting new people, and are always cause for non-stop laughter: seat-changing races (e.g., "change seats if you like to put mayonnaise on your guinea pig!"), people bingo, snorting circles where if you laugh you're out, a much more awesome version of rock-paper-scissors called bear-pistol-ninja, and a Peruvian game one of the kids led where you have to sell/buy a "duck," but speaking in a different type of voice each time (crying, laughing, serious, sad, etc.).

Seat-changing game

Bears and pistols

Selling the "duck"

Then, first thing Friday morning, we divide the boys into color-coded teams and the weekend-long competition for points begins. A team can get points for participating in the workshops, helping out with chores, completing assigned projects, arriving early to scheduled events, helping other campers, winning field-day games, etc. Teams can also lose points if members arrive late, leave garbage lying around, bully other campers, or "escape" (what we PCVs jokingly call it when a kid goes outside the campgrounds without telling us). The boys get really into the competition and their desire for points adds an extra level of animation to all the weekend's activities.

Nick's group of boys deciding on a team name

Name posters of all six teams: "The Leaders," "The Thunderwolves," "Successful Youth," "Lucky 7's," "The Fantastics," and "The Super Blues"

Although the theme of this year's camp was "Imagine a Peru without Machismo," each year's Camp VALOR also includes other standard topics, such as sexual health, self esteem, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and planning for the future. As part of the latter, we took the boys on a tour of the National University of Cajamarca, one of the largest public colleges in Peru. Hearing about all the different majors and seeing a real university campus was a first for most of our campers, and they left the tour talking about how cool it would be to study at the UNC.

Later in the weekend, we did a workshop on goal-setting and the importance of planning ahead for the future, and we also organized a panel of professionals. Although only six of our planned 10 panelists actually showed up, the boys got some great face-time with professionals from various fields and had the opportunity to ask questions about their work and the paths that led them to their jobs.

For the main combating machismo theme of the camp, we first did a sex-vs.-gender workshop with the boys. Through questions like, "if a man is wearing a skirt does that make him a woman?" or "if a woman is playing soccer does that make her a man?" the kids eventually grasped the difference between sex and gender. Following a sample skit by some volunteers (which featured Amanda in a mustache and Nick in a dress), each team of boys put on a mini-play of examples of machismo in Peruvian society, then ranked the various types of gender-based discrimination based on how severe they thought they were.

Categorizing concepts as gender- vs. sex-related

Amanda and Nick's skit

Different types of gender-based discrimination

But camp, of course, is never all work and no play. Saturday morning we took the boys to the local public pool, complete with water slide. Friday afternoon we walked across the plaza to an ice cream shop and each camper got to choose his favorite flavor. Free time at night was filled with guitar-playing, jenga and twister competitions, and even some dancing - Peruvian kids (both girls and boys) grow up regularly learning and performing cultural dances at school, so boys are much more comfortable dancing than their American peers would be. Friday night we showed a movie (the boys picked Sherlock Holmes) in the auditorium, and Saturday night the rain graciously let up enough for us to build a bonfire and roast s'mores.

Saturday morning we held a tournament of field games: three-legged race, mine field, relay races, potato-sack race, a tubes-and-ball challenge, human knot, and water balloon toss.

The camp's final project that the teams had to tackle was a debate, where each group was assigned to defend either the proposition or opposition side of one of three gender equity-related topics: the media's role in promoting gender equality, the benefits/drawbacks of sex-segregated schools, and whether a certain percentage of government jobs should be reserved for women. The boys worked diligently in their teams to prepare for the debates, despite the fact that the basic concept of debate does not come naturally to Peruvian students. Peru's education system emphasizes memorization and copying down the ideas the teacher presents, rather than critical thinking skills. Consequently, the assignment of coming up with arguments for a certain point of view is anything but easy - it took a lot of coaching and explaining, but once they grasped the idea the boys really dug in and worked to ensure their team was as prepared as possible to defend their assigned topic.

Preparing their arguments

The formal debate

When Sunday rolled around, the volunteers were proud to watch three awesome debates unfold. Then it was time to make some speeches of recognition, hand out certificates to each camper, and announce the final points tallies.

Vinnie and Chris giving speeches and certificates

Although it was extremely close (one point!), the "Super Blues" scraped by with the win and took home the coveted first prize of a soccer ball for each team member. VALOR was a great experience for the boys who participated, because it offered them the opportunity for so many "firsts": traveling outside their hometowns, being encouraged to use their natural leadership skills, going down a water slide, meeting boys from other provinces, being in a camp setting, having someone show them how to correctly use a condom, visiting a university campus, being told they should set goals for their future and make plans to achieve them, having a forum to discuss the problem of alcoholism in Peruvian society, etc. etc. - the list goes on. Helping these boys learn, play, and grow together over the course of the weekend was also an exhausting, but incredibly fulfilling experience for us as volunteers - although we put in a lot of work to run youth camps like VALOR and ALMA, we have so much fun doing it that we're already looking forward to the next one.