From the beginning of our operations in Malawi, World Camp has been focused on ensuring female empowerment was a part of our programming. The nature of the spread of HIV caries from region to region but one of the primary causes for the rapid spread of HIV in Malawi and similar countries is the gender disparity that exists. Women are unable to determine the terms in which they have sex and this makes them more likely to become infected. For this reason, and an interest in human rights, gender empowerment has been part of World Camp/World Camp for Kids’ curriculum for well over a decade. Back in the day World Camp also offered a scholarship program to help girls in secondary school.
These days, World Camp undertakes what’s called gender mainstreaming. This means that regardless of whether a program specifically addresses gender issues, we assess the impact the program would have on women and girls. We also think about whether there is gender parity in leadership, staffing, and participation. Here’s a little bit more about what we’re up to these days to empower, encourage, and celebrate women and girls.
Within our World Camp Clubs we try to ensure female students are involved by encouraging participation whenever we’re present. We also work closely with both a female and male faculty advisor for each Club. We ask the faculty advisors to help us ensure girls are speaking up, running for student leadership positions, and participating in community improvement projects. Similarly, we have two World Camp Clubs Mentors and one of them is a woman – gender parity!
In our Camp Hope Follow-Up program we also employ an equal number of female and male Mentors. We do not insist on equal female and male participants as we are aiming to serve youth living with HIV that are most in need. In a recent Follow-Up session, though, grinding food in a mortar was required as part of preparing a healthy meal. This task is one typically assigned to women in Malawian culture but Mentors and the Country Manager ensured that both sexes participated in the work equally.
World Camp staff frequently meet with stakeholders in our partner communities and one of the groups we are honored to work with in each community is the Mothers’ Group. A lot has been written about the importance of Mothers’ Groups and we couldn’t agree more! These women offer us invaluable insight and we are grateful for the opportunity to support the work they do to benefit all children, but particularly girls, in their communities.
This past summer, World Camp Managing Director Emily Stallings had the chance to work directly with teachers in some of our partner schools, talking about reproductive health and family planning. Some of the most valuable skills she was able to share were natural birth control methods. As mentioned above, it is very hard for women to negotiate the terms of sex but if a woman knows when she is most fertile, she knows when the tough situation created by insisting on safe sex is most important. While it is small progress and does not change the systemic issues, it empowers the women living within the situation. These teachers in turn may share this information with others in their communities.
World Camp’s senior-most active staff member is a woman, our American Board of Directors is nearly 50/50 female/male, and our Country Manager came to us from an organization the works with only women.
We take gender equality seriously and are happy to be celebrating another International Women’s Day!!
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