Girls' Conference

Camilo and I just got out of a meeting with one of the Senior Staff here and are trying to get a conference planned for June. It's going to be tricky - we lost most of our institutional memory with the evacuation and it's hard to plan anything here anyway!! But with the addition of a new volunteer who already completed one tour in Costa Rica and worked on conferences there I think we have the motivation we need to really get moving.

The point of the conference is to bring girls from the middle and high schools together to talk about issues in their lives - nutrition, the challenges of being a girl in Guinea, early marriage/pregnancy, what to be when you grow up, etc. They learn how to give presentations and are expected to go back home and organize some type of workshop for students or community members on topics like HIV/AIDS or female circumcision or whatever else interests them. For some girls it's the first time they've really traveled away from their villages and it's really exciting and motivating to meet other girls in the same boat from different parts of Guinea. We are even planning to have a women's panel using successful Guinean women from the Mamou area (including my friend Madame Diallo!)

I'll keep you updated as this progresses. I'm pretty pumped about the possibility!