Camp BILT Write-Up

Peace Corps Suriname is proud to announce the successful completion of its sixth youth development camp based on the Camp GLOW model.  Over the past two years, Peace Corps Volunteers have worked with over 200 students and local mentors to bring life skills education, youth empowerment, and HIV/AIDS prevention education to underserved populations around Suriname.  These local leaders have carried the camps’ lessons back to dozens of communities and spread them through youth clubs, school activities, and other community education events.  The offering has improved with each camp, in terms of impact and sustainability, as organizers strive to put more responsibility on community partners, include more local mentors, and reach a broader pool of communities and students.  With our post soon closing, we are now working to push this evolution to the next stage – completely handing off a strong, durably youth development concept to local partners.

The latest camp, held May 18-21, continued this process.  It was also the second youth camp to include our biggest change yet: applying the GLOW model to boys.  Camp BILT (Boys Improving Lives Together) brought together 30 boys and seven local male mentors from some of the villages furthest south on the Gran Rio and Upper Suriname River.  While Camp GLOW in Suriname remains focused on female empowerment and HIV/AIDS prevention education, Camp BILT has adapted the message for boys to focus more on personal responsibility and teamwork.  This most recent camp also included several structural modifications from our other camps, generating significant positive feedback from campers, local partners, and Volunteers assisting with the event.

One of the most impactful changes was an explicit focus on the camp’s theme of leadership, responsibility, and teamwork.  This was illustrated by the camp motto, “Na wan kodo maun sa hai boto, subi dan.” (One hand alone cannot pull the boat through the rapids.)  The lessons – leadership, environmental protection, drugs and alcohol, careers and goal setting, HIV/AIDS prevention, and life decisions – educated students about how these characteristics support positive outcomes in many different arenas and offered opportunities to practice their skills.  At the same time, the camp was organized to allow explicit and implicit tie-ins to that theme each day.  The capstone was a daily closing ceremony that brought the boys, as one large community, physically together to silently consider how they could become better leaders using the lessons of the day and the opportunities coming up the following morning. 

To further support the theme, Camp BILT gave the children more responsibility for themselves and each other in the camp’s team structure.  The camp still divided students into teams for lessons, activities, and trust-building activities, with local adults and Volunteers assigned to guide each team, but asked the children to take on the bulk of team leadership responsibilities.  Two “kid captains” each day were responsible for assisting adults with keeping their team in order and supporting lessons. All children were given the opportunity to be a captain and constantly reminded of the leadership challenge issued on the first day – be a leader who takes responsibility not just for yourself, but for those around you. 

Camp BILT also continued the trend towards greater local partner involvement, a critical piece of any sustainable project.  Every lesson was planned and executed in partnership with a local mentor, increasing ownership for the host country nationals involved and providing strong role models for the boys to see standing at the head of the class.  Local mentors also slept in the cabins with the boys, taking responsibility for discipline and nightly de-briefs with the boys to help them digest the camp and generate feedback.  This increased bonding between mentors and boys, while leaving Peace Corps Volunteers free to focus on organizational and logistics preparation, as well as keeping energy levels high.

Between the constant evolution from camp to camp and the underlying strength of the Camp GLOW model, youth development camps are a shining success story for Peace Corps in Suriname.  This type of investment in the youth of the interior is unique to Peace Corps and offers children and adults a look at a type of education they otherwise never see.  As our post nears closing, however, the organization faces the same challenge that Camp BILT put to the boys every day – how can we make the lessons learned take root in communities to flourish and spread on their own? 

Peace Corps Suriname is working with community partners as well as the government to hand off parts of what the Camp GLOW model has to offer to youth in the interior, but there is no simple solution.  We depend on the diverse group of Volunteers and their local partners to look constantly for more ways to transmit the knowledge and excitement that comes from these camps.

Here for pictures.