With Camp Hope
just around the corner (the first session on August 2nd and the last on
August 18th) we at World Camp are quite excited. Camp Hope is a summer
program that happens each summer for kids in Malawi living with HIV.
With a HIV prevalence of 10.6% HIV is unfortunately common amongst
Malawian youths. Camp Hope gives these kids a space to meet other youths
living with HIV and engage in educational programs to help them cope.
Some of the main focuses of Camp Hope are to: increase understanding
of anti-retroviral therapy (ART), promote nutritious eating and healthy
living, as well as to improve self-confidence and decision making
skills. Youths living with HIV and their guardians face a plethora of
issues ranging from social stigma around HIV/ AIDS to remembering the
names of treatments and how to take them. Camp Hopes both guardians and
youths to handle these issues by developing programs which help kids
handle all aspects of their health as much as they can while enabling
guardians to provide the best support.
This year Managing Director Emily Stallings and myself are traveling
to Malawi in the beginning of August to assist with this year’s Camp
Hope. This will be my first year helping out in Malawi after interning
in the Asheville offices for a year and I could not be more excited.
Camp Hope will be my first opportunity to try doing what I want to do
for the rest of my life; teaching health education abroad, particularly
sexual health education. While there’s room for improvement in the
American sexual education system, I feel that teaching sexual health in
the developing world truly change the world. Especially in countries
like Malawi, where 46.9% of the population is under the age of 14,
empowering youths with knowledge of sexual health could prevent so many
negative health outcomes.
Camp Hope is particularly interesting for me because of the holistic
approach they take. Sexual health and ART understanding are taught right
alongside healthy cooking and eating classes as well as classic camp
activities like crafts and games. Even after the completion of Camp Hope
there are Camp Hope Follow-Up sessions and Guardian sessions to
reinforce and expand upon the themes at camp. I’m so looking forward to
seeing the effect that Camp Hope has on these kids and their families as
well as on myself and the staff and take that knowledge with me into my
career. Here’s to another great session of Camp Hope for all the
kiddos and the adults, we all have a lot to learn!
This summer, for the first time
in 14 years, World Camp is not leading a volunteer teaching program. Summer
2015 will mark the official close of our long-standing Outreach Through
Education (OTE) program, as we make a full transition to year-round, locally
driven programming spearheaded by 3 major initiatives: World Camp Clubs,
MediServ, and Camp Hope.
This is a huge, but important
step for World Camp. HIV, gender inequality, and environmental degradation
remain pressing issues for Malawian communities. But – in large part due to what
WC’s OTE program and others have accomplished – needs related to these issues,
and the best ways to address them, have changed.
Nevertheless, this step feels foreign and a
little surreal. Since the founders of World Camp traveled through southern
Africa in 2000, summer has meant organizing and leading volunteer trips. It has
meant the chance to introduce new, wonderful people to the World Camp family:
energetic volunteers traveling across the world with a shared passion and
vision. A time of incredibly hard work and immeasurable fun leaving an
indelible mark on hundreds of volunteers and tens of thousands of students and individuals.
For so many of us, being a World
Camp (for Kids) volunteer or intern was one of the most formative experiences
of our lives. Being a WC volunteer was both deeply personal, but also communal.
While we learned about ourselves and explored new places, we also interacted with
diverse people and built new relationships. While most volunteers experience
great personal growth, we can’t discount the impact we were making. Over 400
volunteers served communities on three continents, reaching nearly 23,000
people directly. Life-saving HIV prevention information was being spread in
remote communities that otherwise lacked access to such knowledge. The morning
songs and large groups of foreigners brought excitement to our students, as
well. The national HIV prevalence rate has gone from around 20% to 10.6% in Malawi
over the time WC volunteers have been teaching.
The incredible dedication and
insight of our volunteers over the years helped World Camp grow deep,
meaningful roots in Malawi – our operations in Honduras and India were always
more tentative. While local translators, field assistants, staff advisers, and
camp participants have always been a crucial perspective and source of support
for World Camp, we've placed an even stronger focus on local ownership in
recent years. Our goal of increasing Malawian participation and leadership in
every aspect of World Camp’s work has led us to year-round programming managed
and implemented by Malawians.
Having been WC volunteers and
having seen the amazing impact our volunteers have had, World Camp continues to
value the role that passionate, intentional people can play in development in
any part of the world. When we look at the future of WC we see a strong role
for volunteers but in a different capacity. It has long been the hope of all WC
volunteers to see Malawians with the skills and knowledge to manage their own
community development. We see great potential in our partner communities and
staff, and the time has come to support rather than lead them.
Volunteer opportunities with
World Camp are not closed – there are always ways to stay involved and
we hope you will be there to support our work and engage with us, as we hope
to remain involved with you.
Thank you all for everything
you’ve done to enable World Camp to grow to its current state. We absolutely
could never have succeeded without each and every one of you. Know that you
have made an impact, not only on World Camp, but the children with whom you came into
contact. Thank you for helping us reach out to these individuals, together
we made a difference.
Please check out our other programs if you haven’t already. We think it’s pretty amazing to see what
started as group of friends and grew into a family of diverse volunteers
has flourished into. Thank you for supporting us – thank you for being us.
Reach out to us at any time with
any questions about this transition. We’ll be in touch too! Still with alumni
updates, Throwback Thursdays, alumni happy hours, and more. We hardly see this
as an end to the relationship WC has with alumni, but rather just another curve
in a very long, exciting road.
Below you can check out a slideshow we have created covering all 14 years of the volunteer program to mark this occasion. We have also created a webpage on this topic. That can be found here.
What would you say are the defining values of World Camp? What values
do you hold that you associate with World Camp? In recently answering
that question, I came up with the following responses:
Belief that improved health and education are the bedrock to increasing people’s choices and freedoms
Malawians know what kind of solutions will work best in their communities
Belief that access to information and skill-building empower individuals
and communities, enabling them to gain control of their futures
Young people are open-minded and quick to pick-up new skills: they are an important demographic to work with
Conveying all the above in supportive, safe, and open environments will
increase the impact of each element as well as create positive outcomes
of its own.
While this list is not exhaustive, it does touch on some of the
central tenants of our work, how we approach change, and our values,
mission, and vision.
As you may have seen on Facebook or our website, we recently updated
our mission statement. While we don't see this mission as a departure
from our previous work, it shows how we're growing as an organization.
Our new mission statement is, “World Camp improves access to
quality health services, education, and resources through
community-driven initiatives in Malawi.” We hope you like it and see your own passions and desires in it.
While our primary sector of focus may be health, we are working
toward improving health through education, capacity-building,
community-driven programs, and creating supportive environments where
individuals can grow. We believe these elements can reinforce each other
and will enable our partner communities to take their health and
well-being into their own hands.
While not all year-round programs address health through all four
elements, each one does address health challenges through at least one
of these elements. Not sure you remember the details of the programs I’m
referring to? Here’s a little refresher on each and how they’re
tackling health challenges in Malawi. Camp Hope
is a residential summer camp and year-round support program
specifically designed for Malawian youth living with HIV. It confronts
health issues by providing direct medical care while also preparing
youth to better care for themselves. The environment is incredibly
supportive and informative. World Camp provides year-round support to
campers from the Malikha Zone – this provides ongoing psychosocial
support and capacity-building. MediServ
is an international medical volunteer program that provides much needed
medical interventions to Malawian patients and hands-on training of
Malawian healthcare providers. Western-trained surgeons and support
staff travel to Malawi and work in the primary public hospital in
Lilongwe, providing surgeries and emergency room procedures. MediServ
volunteers work hand-in-hand with Malawian medical staff, increasing
local knowledge and capacities. World Camp Clubs
are student-run after school clubs supported by World Camp in our 11
partner primary schools. These clubs address challenges in their
communities while also providing a venue to build the capacity and
confidence of youths. Further, World Camp Clubs serve as a way to extend
the learning day so that club members can learn more about health and
life skills topics. World Camp Clubs and World Camp collaborate to
undertake community improvement projects that are intended to touch the
lives of all community members.
I’m very proud of what we were able to achieve in 2014 and believe
this year is looking to be even more impressive. Internally, World Camp
staff and Board of Directors have been working intensely to sharpen our
focus and refine our programs. I’m excited that all this work is
beginning to manifest and our impact is growing. Stay tuned!
