Club GLOW - TMS Chapter

One expectation of participants in this summer's Camp GLOW was for the girls to return to their communities and start a Club GLOW Chapter. The girls of Trinity met with me in August to create a recruitment and activity plan for our chapter. At the start of the school year, we met with the standard 4, 5, and 6 classes to invite girls to join us for an open meeting to talk about the club. Our first open meeting was held after school and we discovered that a better time for most girls would be during lunch (we have from 11:30 to 1 for lunch so the girls eat first then come to club at noon). We have met weekly for the entire first term.

At our first official meeting, the girls generated a list of the qualities of a leader – and they certainly have great insight into leadership, noting such factors as serving as a role model, helping others, and always trying your best. All the girls signed our list of qualities to commit to exhibiting them in their daily lives. From then on, the girls came up with a list of topics they are interested in learning throughout the year and we have had sessions on puberty, using computers, and several art activity sessions. The girls also like to just talk sometimes, and we’ll spend some meetings on open questions (they write anonymous questions and put them into a question cylinder {recycled oats containers really come in handy for lots of projects} and then we read them and have discussion) and we’ve talked about why people are sometimes unkind, what friendship truly means and also some other lighter topics like what we’ll be doing on the weekend.

This year, six of the girls had their first ever sleepover party at one of the GLOW girls’ homes. Her mom was so incredible and the girls ate and ate while watching three movies (of course High School Musical being one), had a pillow fight, and played games. They couldn’t wait to tell the whole group about their night and all that food – these girls can eat, I’ve seen it! Our final sessions were focused on fun and stress relief since the girls were in the midst of exam review and exams. On December 1st, we began with a discussion of HIV/AIDS in commemoration of World AIDS Day then the girls made journals with the kits we received in the donations sent along with Darcy and Heidi from the folks at Mount Ida. The girls LOVED making their journals and many brought them in the next day to show me they’d begun using them!

This week was our final meeting of the term and the girls had selected to have a tea party – with kool-aid (because most don’t like tea), cookies, and mini-peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A very unique sort of tea party, but a great time to hang out and celebrate the first term and the holiday season. The girls devoured the food! One girl said she was dreaming about eating healthy sandwiches and cookies from Ms. Ginnie; I told the girls the week before that I would bring the sandwiches and cookies because I wanted to give them some healthy snacks. Fortunately, they enjoyed them – granted a few girls were a bit curious about the oats in the applesauce/banana/oatmeal cookies, but they still disappeared in just minutes! Where they put all that food, I don’t know, but I am glad they could have such a treat.

As you can see, Lizette is anxious to get to those cookies

Club GLOW has been one of my favorite activities for the past three months and I am really looking forward to what more these amazing young ladies will come up with in the next two terms. I’m so proud of all of them and am always excited when they come to visit me during breaks to tell me how they are doing or to just hang out and talk.

The GLOW Girls of Trinity Methodist School