Preparing for Eastern Region GLOW Camp by James D

James D
Nyagatare, Eastern Province


In about one week, volunteers in the Eastern Region of Rwanda will be putting on a GLOW Camp. As you may already know, GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World. It is a weeklong camp for secondary school girls to learn about life skills, as well as HIV and malaria prevention, and sexual health. Volunteers throughout the region are bringing students, senior facilitators, junior facilitators, or all three. Since I still do not currently have a GLOW Club at my school (although, I did just meet the headmaster the other day, so fingers crossed that one can be started in the near future) I am in charge of the career panel, monitoring and evaluation, and the malaria component of the camp.

Not only is the Eastern Region providing bed nets for all campers for use during the camp and to take home, we will also be implementing the Grassroot Soccer Skillz Malaria intervention throughout the week. Grassroot Soccer is a nonprofit organization that focuses on HIV/AIDS education in Africa, with pilot programs in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South-East Asia. Grassroot Soccer also has interventions on malaria and women's empowerment. Last March, Grassroot Soccer came to Peace Corps Rwanda and provided a weeklong training on the HIV and malaria interventions and will host another training this fall. I also had the opportunity to see the full Skillz Malaria intervention in action at the STOMP Out Malaria in Africa Boot Camp hosted in Theis, Senegal, this past June.

You may be wondering, how is malaria related to gender? One of the most at-risk populations for malaria are people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). According to the Rwanda Biomedical Center's Gender Assessment of Rwanda's National HIV Response, "Rwanda's HIV prevalence is 3.0% in the general population aged 15-49, but is higher among women (3.7%) than among men. (2.3%)" Also, the report concludes that young women aged 18-19 are ten times more likely to to acquire HIV than men of the same age.

Co-infection of Malaria and HIV/AIDS is a major cause of death in sub-saharan Africa. According to the WHO, HIV increases the risk of malaria infection, especially severe malaria in adults and in turn malaria increases HIV replication. Both of the diseases cause over 2 million deaths each year, and due to their increased risk of co-infection, it also increases the transmission of malaria each year.

At the Eastern GLOW Camp we will teach both about HIV prevention and malaria prevention, and hopefully the girls will really take in the information that they learn and continue the giant steps Rwanda is making towards an AIDS free generation. Tuzareba!