Mini Camp H.E.A.L. 2012

Over fall break, I organized a 3-day mini Camp H.E.A.L. with a handful of other PCVs, using the leftover funds from my summer Camp H.E.A.L. partnership grant from Peace Corps. Camp H.E.A.L. is an annual Peace Corps-organized summer camp focused on the biology, transmission, prevention, and treatment of HIV/AIDS, counter human trafficking, human rights, leadership, volunteerism, healthy lifestyles and project design and management. This is by far my favorite Peace Corps summer camp, and the one that I'm the most passionate about. I've been involved with this camp for the last 2 years - you can check out my blog post about the summer Camp H.E.A.L. 2012 here. 

Rocking our Camp HEAL tshirts!

For this mini version of the summer camp, we headed to a little town called Ahtyrka in Sumskaya Oblast (on the eastern side of Ukraine, northwest of Kharkiv). I originally wanted this camp to take place in the city of Kharkiv, but it didn't work out because Kharkiv doesn't have many sanatoriums/resorts and we couldn't afford staying at a hotel downtown. So we decided to rent a charter bus to/from the Kharkiv train station and stayed at the beautiful resort Bymerovka, the site of Camp H.E.A.L. and Camp OHALOW in 2011. We took 50 students from around Kharkiv region, ages 14-20 as participants along with a few university students and English teachers as adult chaperones. It was super jam-packed with activities, lessons, and games and I think everyone was a little overwhelmed with how much we had planned, but everyone seemed to have a great time.

With my school psychologist Ira Ivanovna!

My 11th grade student Anna Overko, who is an amazing artist - she painted this banner for us!

Matt with his counterpart Julia, an English teacher from Myrgorod, Poltavskaya Oblast. 

We divided up the participants into six teams, and asked them to come up with a a team name and design a team flag. Some of these kids are super creative and came up with funny names that I would never have thought of!

The "Red Curly Leg Hairs"

Lukas and the "Blue Smurfs"

The "Crazy Chickens"

The "Green Crocodiles Family"

Niki and the "Pink Panthers"

Matt and the "Purple Pandas"

We started off the first night with a lesson on the biology of HIV/AIDS and making origami red ribbons to show awareness and solidarity for people living with HIV and AIDS. We used a lesson plan created by my friend Abby Anderson, another Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine who  also worked at Camp HEAL and Camp OHALOW (Overcoming HIV AIDS and Leading Our World) with me in 2011. You can get the lesson plan here, with instructions on how to fold your own red ribbon from a sheet of A4 sized paper.

Niki and Pete explaining the stages of HIV.

Matt going over the T-cells and B-cells. 

Niki working on the red ribbons with the pink team.

Kym making ribbons with her team: the "Curly Red Leg Hairs."

Sorting the ribbons by language - half of them were in English (to be sent to Peace Corps volunteers serving in other countries) and half were in Russian/Ukrainian. 

The ribbons hanging on the wall. Translation - don't lose hope! 

Collecting ribbons with two of the girls. 

Then we had "Dance, Dance, Dance" in the evening - where Kym, Matt and Lukas taught everyone some typical American dances: "Crank Dat Soldier Boy", "Cotton Eyed Joe" and "Cupid Shuffle". These dances were a big hit last summer, so we decided to teach them again!

Cranking dat. 

The steps to Cotton Eyed Joe are tricky!

"Now kick, now kick..."

"...now walk it by yourself" - Cupid Shuffle

Stas showing off his "Gangham style"

The girls from Kharkiv's Karazin national university. 

Ukrainians love discos!

The second day, we had 3 lessons - Stigma/Discrimination with Jamie, Project Design and Management with Kym and HIV Transmission and Prevention with Niki. The transmission and prevention lesson was interesting because it included a demonstration about the correct way to put a condom on a banana. While this type of demonstration may be considered controversial and risky in Ukraine, it is extremely useful because correctly using a condom to have safe sex is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of HIV. A lot of the kids are shy at first, but then they open up and laugh because none of them have ever put a condom on a banana before.

Jamie explaining the difference between stigma and discrimination.

Pink and Blue teams with Niki deciding whether the statements about transmission are true or false. 

Kym teaching about the stages of developing a project. 

Niki and I demonstrating the proper way to use a condom. 

the twins, Egor and Misha.

Nela, Lera, Liz and Kate.

Then we had a series of leadership/team building activities organized by Pete, where the teams rotated between three stations. The first station was "crossing the river", where the teams could only step on (paper) stones to cross the river. The second station was "toxic waste", where the teams worked together using only yarn, and a silicone bracelet to pick up a glass and a ball together and move them out of the danger zone. The third station was a 10x10 grid, where the teams had to find the correct path by trial and error. Then signal their teammates without talking, showing them which way to walk across.

Purple team's interesting strategy for "crossing the river"

Green team girls negotiating their way across the grid.

Green team girls untangling themselves in the "human knot"

Ira and Stas working together with the pink team to place the "toxic waste" onto the cup.

We also had a guest speaker come from the Kharkiv regional office of the All-Ukraininan Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. He shared his life story and experiences as a person living with HIV in Ukraine. Many of the students said that this was very interesting for them, since they had never had the opportunity to meet anyone affected by HIV/AIDS. To protect our guest speaker and his status, I will not post any photos of him. There is still a lot of stigma surrounding HIV in Ukraine, a lot of people are afraid of even hearing the word HIV said out loud. Our camp is one of the few programs trying to change these attitudes by educating the youth of Ukraine about HIV/AIDs, including the ways of transmission and prevention.

Everyone all dressed up in their Halloween costumes. 

In the evening, we had a Hallowen Disco! All of the kids were excited about this because many of them had never celebrated Halloween before. Most Ukrainians tend to think that Halloween costumes have to be scary and bloody, but we tried to show them that Halloween costumes can also be funny or crazy!

Baba Jamie (a Ukrainian grandmother) and iJing. 

Alla as a clown and Jenia as The Joker, with Ira. 

A few of my students from Shevchenkove - Liza, Masha, Lilia, Anna, Anya,  plus Marina and Alla. 

Lots of bloody zombies and vampires with Jill as Iowa sweet corn and Matt as Robin Hood. 

Another group of kids with Matt... notice Vova with the bloody zipper face - he won best male costume!

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year :)

All the zombies say "rawrrrrrr"

Oppa Camp HEAL style!

On the last day, we had only two lessons - human rights with Lukas and human trafficking with Jill. After the lessons, we had a quick trivia style quiz game to test the knowledge of the students. Since we were crunched on time, we watched the slideshow and quickly passed out all the certificates and then we hopped on the bus back to Kharkiv.

The statistics for Jill's human trafficking lesson.  

Jill teaching about the different types of human trafficking.

Green Crocodile family girls!

Purple pandas!

 I'm proud to have been a part of Camp H.E.A.L. for the past two years during my service in Ukraine as a Peace Corps Volunteer... these 3 camps have been some of the fondest memories that I have, and its been awesome working with such enthusiastic and bright young Ukrainians. I love Camp HEAL!

Running around with my director clipboard, solving problems like no hot water in the rooms or the kitchen not knowing that we had coffee break  haha. 

Camp HEAL 2012: Youth Helping Youth Fight AIDS

As promised, I'm about a month behind on my summer travel posts... so this will be all about Camp HEAL 2012! The camp took place from July 4th-12th, 2012 in Odessa Oblast.

Everyone from Camp HEAL 2012 in our camp tshirts :D

In a nutshell, this camp has been my favorite camp out of all the camps that I have worked at during my time as a volunteer in Ukraine. This camp has existed for 6 years, but this was just my second summer working at this camp, you can check out my blog post from Camp HEAL 2011. This camp is an English language summer camp for Ukrainian youth, organized by Peace Corps Volunteers and focused on empowering the future leaders of Ukraine. Camp H.E.A.L. stands for human trafficking, education, AIDS and HIV, and leadership. Of course, this camp was only made possible by the generous donations from all of our friends and family back at home... I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped fund my partnership grant this spring! This camp was a huge success but it would never have happened without all of your donations and your support!

THANK YOU from everyone at Camp HEAL 2012! 

We stayed at an old Soviet-style sanatorium in a small town called Sergeevka, which is about an hour from the city of Odessa. We had 90 participants at camp this summer, from all different regions of Ukraine. I brought 6 of my own students from my town, and one of the main English teachers that I work with in my school. One of the best parts about this camp is how all the participants come back inspired and motivated to change their lives and their communities, so I'm looking forward to working with my students on more HIV-related projects this fall.

My students on the beach: Ira, (me) , Vadym, Dasha, Katya, Tanya and our teacher Larisa Alexandrovna. 

I am proud to have been a team leader for the Blue Angry Sharks with my friend Lukas, who is a PCV in Odessa. We had six teams, each with 15 students and 2 PCVs as counselors. My team consisted of students who had just finished 10th and 11th grade, and they were an awesome group. We adopted the "Baby Shark" song as our theme and blended it with "Angry Birds" to become the "Angry Sharks"! They were all enthusiastic about the camp activities and worked super hard in the games and challenges all week to overcome the team of university students - I'm proud to say that we finished in 1st place in the overall team points competition!

The Blue Angry Shark team!

Blue Angry Sharks on stage with our team flag.

Showing our best shark faces. 

Over the course of the week, the counselors taught a series of lessons about the biology, transmission and stages of HIV/AIDS, leadership, vounteerism, fundraising, and also human trafficking. One of the most interesting parts of Camp HEAL this year was how the participants actually got to design and implement projects by themselves. After completing 2 lessons on human trafficking, the students created posters in Ukrainian or Russian to advertise the phone number "527" - the Ukrainian national human trafficking prevention hotline sponsored by the International Organization for Migrants (IOM). We took these posters to the beach in Sergeevka and the students completed their 527 awareness campaign by walking up and down the coast and handing out IOM pamphlets. Together, they spoke to just about everyone who would listen on the beach, and I think that they were pleasantly surprised to find that they could really make a difference in people's lives by just opening them up to new ideas and new information about human trafficking.

(roughly) translated: Don't fall into the spider web... call 527!

translation: Do you want to be safe? Call 527!

translation: Humans are not goods for sale! 

(roughly) translated: Don't become a trafficking victim!

translation: We are against human trafficking! Call the 527 hotline! Be aware!

At the end of the week, each team designed a 45-minute lesson about HIV/AIDS and presented their lesson plan on stage. It was fun to see how each team presented the material in different ways, and the team that came up with the best lesson plan would be selected to actually teach their lesson. My team ended up winning this competition, they created a series of activities and skits to present the biology, transmission and about stigma and stereotypes surrounding people living with HIV/AIDS. They taught their lesson to a group of 7th grade students from the local school in Sergeevka!

Comparing the stages of HIV in to a house with less and less bricks. 

the different stages of HIV.

Camp HEAL was a lot more than just teaching lessons and project design: we had different sports challenges  in the afternoons, and team activities in the evening. There were also a variety of "morning exercises" offered each day: running - where students could run to the beach, swim a little and run back; yoga, basketball, African dance, hip-hop dance, and even an introduction to jujitsu (a type of martial arts)! We also had "Street Workout", a very common type of athletic exercise here in Ukraine where you just make do with whatever playground equipment that you can find outside.

Campers doing morning yoga with Erika. 

A few girls showing off their hip-hop dance moves with Kym!

Shooting hoops with Robbie and Alex.

Doing pullups during the Street Workout with Matt. 

The guys LOVED learning some jujitsu moves with Kevin. 

Caitlin (a PCV from Cherkasy region) and I organized a bunch of relay races for one of the afternoon activities. Although it was super hot outside and everyone was getting mosquito bites like crazy, the kids enjoyed competing in the relays. We had different games that are standard at American summer camps, but were completely new to the Ukrainians such as a 3-legged race, balloon races, filling a bucket with a sponge, and passing a water balloon.

Karina and Sophie from the blue team. 

Michelle and the yellow team cheered for everyone, not just their own team!

The guys really got competitive during the races haha. 

The red team celebrates after winning one of the races. 

Filling up a bucket with only a sponge was such a foreign concept to the kids, but they got it pretty quickly!

Alex (our Ukrainian camp director, from the Kharkiv branch of the All-Ukrainian Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS) organized an afternoon of leadership activities, which the kids also loved because they had never done these classic team-building exercises before. The first activity was the "web of leadership," a spider web made out of rope strung between two trees. The kids had to pass every team member over to the other side without touching the rope, and using each "hole" only once. The second activity was a memory game, each team member had to step across a 10x10 grid of squares in the correct path. The third activity was a blindfolded snake, where all team members except one were blindfolded and the one who wasn't blindfolded was not allowed to speak. The teams had to navigate blindfolded through an obstacle course by communicating only through different body signals sent by the last person who could see, such as a tap on the shoulder. It was great to see which kids stepped up as leaders of their teams during these activities, and it really helped them understand what it takes to be a leader.

Blue team passes one of the girls carefully through the web. 

Purple team tries a different approach to passing one of their  team members through the web. 

Red team thinks about the path across the grid. 

Yellow team started out by testing the squares to find the right path. 

The girls from the red team are blindfolded and ready to go. 

Purple team is snaking around an obstacle in the path. 

Lana thinks about how to signal her team to go under a rope. 

We had so many other awesome things at Camp HEAL.... fireworks for the 4th of July, a water balloon fight, a hee-ho-ha tournament, a casino game night, a scavenger hunt, a fashion show, a talent show, some "discotekas" in the evenings and singing camp songs! We also had two guest speakers - a man who told his story about living with HIV and a representative from a counter human trafficking organization in Odessa. Here are some quick photo highlights from camp:

Margot judging the champions playoffs for hee-ho-ha. 

The fireworks that the guys set up were amazing! 

Kym and Robbie dancing at the backwards themed disco.

Grace's specialty: leading the 3 "short neck buzzards" song with Liz and Robbie. 

Katya and Tanya cracking up. 

Dance Dance Dance: everybody learning the steps to Cotton Eyed Joe,  Cupid Shuffle and Crank Dat Soldier Boy songs with Matt and Kym. 

Bananas of the world united with Michelle!

Our Peace Corps Ukraine country director, Doug Teschner,  joined in on the Baby Shark song. 

Guess who filled up 500 + water balloons just for this?? me, Kevin and Matt. 

Jill, Jamie, Grace and Margot with two of the girls. 

me with all the teachers who came to camp as chaperones and Andriy, the director of HIV/AIDS programming for Peace Corps Ukraine. 

Ukrainians love talent shows, probably because they are all so talented! After attending numerous school concerts and talent shows, I've learned that almost every Ukrainian girl can sing or dance. We had an assortment of both, plus a few skits and multiple students who were talented piano players.

All the counselors singing "Lean on Me" at the end of the show. 

Pete, Chris, Alex, and Robbie in a band called "NЕМА" (translation:  "don't have anything" - they lip synched and air guitared because their band didn't have anything haha)

Anya and Masha dancing an awesome composition of the how dance progressed through time. 

Katya and Dima dancing to a classic American song from the 1950's. 

A group from the red team dancing to "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

Jason and the Cherkasy Ladies singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believing"

A guitar duet to a song by Adele. 

Girls from purple team dancing together. 

A beautiful contemporary/modern dance solo. 

Olga and Karina after their dance.

And of course, no summer camp would be complete without some fun in the sun! We had a great time hanging out on the beach... everyone got in some quality tanning, splashing around in the water, tossing around a frisbee and football, photo sessions and just chilling in the sand :P

The Human Pyramid. 

The start of my photo session with Karina, Anya, Masha and Olga - my 4 girls from Kharkov <3 td="td">

Feet up.  

with the camp banner!

trying to work on our model poses. 

with Jamie, one of our PCV camp directors!

Dima the Seaweed Monster. 

we buried Matt and Robbie in the sand. 

Kevin tried snorkeling with his recycled Coke bottle. 

Robbie and Grace with DJ Dima (and the crab that he found). 

Chris and Pete throwing Jamie into a backflip. 

classic. 

a second classic. 

If you've made it all the way to the end of this post, I bet you can understand why I love Camp HEAL!!! I'm bummed that I won't be here in Ukraine for next summer's camp, but I hope it will be just as awesome as ever!