AIDS/ Leadership Camp 1

As many of you know Becky( another Peace Corps Volunteer in my province) and I have spent the past 5 months of countless hours and stress preparing for and developing an AIDS/ Leadership camp for high school students. Well, it finally happened. It was a 3 day camp taking place on the 22-24 of January. Ten students and 1 teacher from 7 schools in my community came to participate. The premise of the camp was basically to help build students leadership abilities, teach them about HIV/AIDS, and then have them take the information they learned and go back to their schools to peer teach. The camp was ran by teachers, nurses, and community members. We wanted to do this type of camp because children generally listen to their peers more than their teachers and we thought it would be the best way to get the information to a lot of people on a small budget and with little time. We couldn't have asked for the camp to go better or smoother, but I guess thats what happens when you have a great community helping you and have spent the past 5 months working on it. We worked really hard to get about 1000 dollars by writing grants to the United States Government through Peace Corps and through community donations to be able to pull this project off. We were able to create a camp that was almost completely taught by Thai people so that we could facilitate and not have to worry about the children trying to understand our accents. This was also wonderful because it will help to show Thai people in our community that they are able to do projects like this on their own in the future. HIV/AIDS is very misunderstood in Thailand, but with programs like this it is slowly becoming more understood and people are better able to prevent themselves from contracting this disease and help the people that do get it.

Picture 1: This is a picture of our sign for the camp. Yes I know it is grammatically in correct. It was suppose to say Kids Teach Kids in Kampangphet, but the printers messed it up. Just think Tinglish people!

Picture 2: This is a picture of me helping to explain a leadership activity called the matrix. This is an activity where the children have to figure out how to make it through the grid with no talking.

Picture 3: A nurse at the school introduces the topic of HIV/AIDS to the students, how it is contracted, what it does to the body, and how you can prevent it.

Picture 4: The students do a game where they pretend to be penis's and condoms. Can you tell me apart from the students??