Tell me about your past and I'll show you your future.

It is Saturday here in the Philippines, normally a rest day for me but today there is work to be done and girls who just want to have fun and be with their Ate Rina.  So onwards I push with this ear ache, for the benefit of the mga bata (the children), who will remember this moment for the rest of their life!

I made it through another day and made it through the first full day of the camp!  We began today at 7:39. I figured they would be late so I was not in a rush to get started. But boy was I wrong! I guess the houseparents passed the message to them that people who arrive early earn play money! There were early birds and we danced to Beenie man's gimme,gimme, gimme and the Cha Cha slide.

Us stretching before exercising.

We started today with our first session being self esteem. They talked about what makes them happy like activities, interests, parents etc. then we talked about body image. We showed slides of how stars look with and without make up, then challenged them to make their own skits. They were wonderful! I am always amazed at their creativity! They showed different themes like losing weight, skin whitening, peer pressure, pimples, etc.

The lovely social work students!

A few of the younger children presenting their self-esteem bricks (interests, likes, hobbies)

The groups are preparing for their commercials/skits!

A beautiful view of Mount Mayon while I wait for the girls to finish practicing.

Presentations!

Snack Time!

A brief team processing meeting before the afternoon activities.

After jollibee snack we discussed healthy relationships. I did not have a PowerPoint for that one but we did Bahay, bata, Baguio then freeze dance to discuss questions about their relationships with family, peers and friends. It went okay. Not too bad.  Some of the questions that came up was bad relationships with parents and parents not believing a child when she reports something that happened to her.  This example is a real life situation when the mothers of the girls don't believe that they have been sexually abused by their step fathers or uncles.  Our Social worker handled the questions and offered to talk to them one on one later on if they wanted to.



Then after lunch we split the groups into two: mag bata and mga ate to discuss topics of puberty and dating. I went with the little ones. It was fun! We started by playing "Simon says" as touching different body parts. Then we started talking about puberty and how our bodies change. We talked about having a deeper voice, hair, breasts and the menstrual cycle. Then we started talking about touch. Safe touch and bad touch. We watched a video and talked about what parts of the body are private and what to do. They then went over the story and colored it. It was great. I had 13 girls there. It was a long day. Tomorrow is the last day and we begin balancing the budget! Grace did great today and the house parents were all on board. Great team players!

The girls are coloring their activity book entitled: Listen to your feelings; Only you know how you feel. It talks about family, friends, strangers and good and bad touch.

Here the social work students go over the story with the girls page by page and process how they feel.

My vision for discussing these topics prior to our discussion about HIV/AIDS and STI's was to demystify the risky behaviors that could lead to unprotected sex and contracting the disease; poor/unhealthy relationships with family, friends, peers, self-loathe/unrealistic body image, unhealthy dating behaviors/intimate dating violence, unsafe touch, child exploitation.  For the bata these were individual topics but for the older girls, they were able to see the connection as you will see in the next blog post.

Thanks for reading.