PCV Project: Sexual Diversity Training for Teachers

All it takes is a slightly awkward dinamica to get people participating

Recently teachers and MINED técnicos in Muelle de los Bueyes, RAAS had the opportunity to participate in a workshop about sexual diversity. The workshop involved presentation on topics such as concepts of sexual diversity, gender rights for the LGBT community, and stigma and discrimination. Participants watched the video “Diversidad a todo color” and presented sociodramas about topics like coming out to family or rejection from friends.

The workshop was part of a VAST project that HE 61 PCV Monica is organizing with a group called Movimiento de Diversidad Sexual, based in Rama. Coordinating with Consejería Escolar and the delegación of MINED ensured permission for teachers’ participation. 

Presenting sociodrama situations

If you’re interested in learning more about this project, contact Monica.
To watch or use the “Diversidad a todo color” video, contact Health sector staff about borrowing it, or look it up on YouTube. 

Teacher Training on Gender

Have you ever found yourself wondering why only the boys ever play soccer during recess, or how girls are almost always called on when the class needs mopping but not nearly as often when a question needs answering? Have you heard teachers giving advice to students like “Girls, you’ll have to take care of yourselves in the future because your husbands will probably be unfaithful” or “Real men don’t cry”?

In honor of the upcoming Day of the Girl, here’s a workshop designed by volunteers to address just those issues of how gender norms affect the school environment. The charla has three objectives:

Resource: Camp in a Box

Although it may be hard to believe now, summer vacations aren’t far away for class in Nicaragua. If you’re wondering what kind of project you can do to fill the often empty month of January, check out the Camp in a Box.

These resources were compiled by Peace Corps to guide and support volunteers looking to do all kinds of camps in their communities – environmental education, HIV, gender equality, life skills, TEFL and more!

Click here to see and download the Camp in a Box folder. 

PCV Project: Torneo de Billar

Generally when we work in sexual and reproductive health we focus on youth and pregnant women. This makes sense in that they are a sexually active population, or soon to be sexually active and they are often under-informed or misinformed about their sexual health and rights. Also, they are fairly accessible populations here in Nicaragua, what with casa maternas and high schools in every town.

But there is one very large and powerful population that we too-often forget about, MEN!

They are half of the population after all, and in the machismo culture that exists in Latin America, men often hold most of the power within their relationships, families, and communities. Because of this, working with men can be intimidating and uncomfortable for a lot of volunteers. One idea that came out of the manual Aquí entre nos from Peace Corps Honduras is the Billiards Tournament.

The idea is simple, gather a group of men in the local Billiards Hall and hold a Tournament. The only catch is that the tournament also includes presentations about HIV/AIDS and condom use, and in the final game the players have to answer questions based on the information from the presentations.

During the Health 63 practicum week in my site, we pulled off a very successful Billiards Tournament. It was definitely one of the most fun and rewarding events in my first year of service. Here are a few things that went well with the tournament that we hosted.

Role Plays on Gender Roles

To get the group you work with thinking about the traditional roles and occupations for men and women, try a role play! In the activity Aprendemos Ser Hombres y Mujeres small groups choose one person to be a woman and one person to be a man, and then dress them up using papelógrafo and other recycled materials.

When all the ‘women’ and ‘men’ are ready, they act out how they think men and women would act in a normal situation—talking and moving around—while another member of the group takes notes. The notes are then used to start a discussion about the difference between sex and gender and the ways gender roles are learned and imposed by society.

Non-machinsta things to say to young boys

A lot of our work as volunteers when it comes to gender focuses on young girls and how we can elevate their self-esteem, and motivate them to study, work and avoid pregnancy at a young age. But, by ignoring half of the population (young boys) we are missing out on a group of people that are equally involved in and harmed by cultural standards that dictate what people should do or feel according to their gender identification.

With that in mind, here are a few ideas of things we can include in our interactions with young boys to change the machista dialogue they often hear. These ideas come from things I’ve heard around my community and especially in the classroom…

•  “It’s ok to cry.”  They, like a lot boys in the US, are told that boys and men don’t cry. Not only does this encourage boys to bottle up emotions instead of finding healthy ways to express themselves, it also suggests that crying, which is ok and expected from girls, is a sign of weakness.

Converting English games into Anatomy Activities

In the English classroom we all have some go-to games that are helpful for reviewing all types of new vocabulary and information. A golden rule in the second-language community is to teach no more than 7-10 new words in any given class. As a TEFL volunteer preparing a charla on the reproductive system for 5^th and 6^th grade girls, I was struck by how much vocabulary is involved and how little practice I had originally planned into the session.

In light of that, here are 3 games I easily adapted to help the participants (girls ages 10-13 in this case) become more familiar with the new information about their bodies:

1. Busca el (los) órgano(s) que…

This activity is adapted from the common game “Find the person who…”  and is a good follow-up to the presentation of different organs and their functions. It gives the participants a chance to actively investigate and review the positions and functions of different body parts.

Resource Overview: Teaching English to Prevent HIV Manual

Education is a key to preventing the spread of HIV and reducing stigma and discrimination against those who are living with the virus. Teach English to Prevent HIV: A Teacher’s Manual is designed to enable PCVs to teach English while also providing students a safe space to learn about HIV/AIDS and develop life skills that reduce their vulnerability to infection. The curriculum focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on speaking and listening skills and aims to achieve a measurable impact on students’ knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, intentions, and behaviors.

Props to the HIV-AIDS Taskforce for sharing this information in their monthly update!

Program Design:
This manual is designed for school-based programs targeting students ages 13–16 with an intermediate level of English language proficiency, but could be adapted for an intermediate community class, a group of college students studying English or even a class with English teachers.

Most lessons last one hour, except lessons 10 and 11 which require project work and more time; however, all lessons could easily be extended to an hour and a half with more time for review and language reinforcement activities. 

Camp GLOW Follow-Up Projects!

The camp itself was a huge success and a fun opportunity for the girls, Volunteers and Nicaraguan organizations that participated. Motivated girls were given a chance to work with volunteers in their community to do a follow-up project. There were 22 girls who ended up taking part in a project, which is huge considering that there were just over 60 campers! We thought we'd talk a bit about what each girl did, as it's an accomplishment worth recognizing.

PCV Project: Pinto para Aprender

In Peace Corps we give a lot of charlas: charlas about teaching strategies, charlas about how to start a business, charlas about how to use a condon, charlas about how to give good charlas, but we all know this isn’t the only way to share information or explore a topic with a group of people. In this blog post we’ll share details about three health volunteers that used art and creative expression to engage girls and boys in topics of sexual health, healthy relationships, and positive lifestyles.

Gender Conscious Movie Night

We’re all aware of how gender stereotypes in movies and TV shows can negatively affect our perceptions of ourselves or others; however, watching movies is a fun activity to do with kids, women, men, your host family, or other community members. Many schools use movie nights as a way to collect money for a specific purpose or event—charging one or two córdobas as an entrance fee and hosting it at school once classes are over.

In this post we’ll discuss two ideas for making movie nights a little more gender conscious: (1) including a gender checklist while watching any movie or (2) showing a gender-equality themed movie or documentary like Girl Rising or Half the Sky.

Resource highlight: Yo Merezco and Yo Tambien Merezco manuals

Peace Corps Volunteers in Honduras created the Yo Merezco manual with the idea of reaching out to young women, ages 10-15, through a course that would encourage positive decision making, especially when it comes to their bodies and sexual relations. After the successful implementation of the manual around the country, health volunteers developed a twin manual for boys: Yo También Merezco.

The four goals of the program are to: 1) postpone sexual relations, 2) empower adolescents and promote self-respect, 3) lower the number of youth who become pregnant, and 4) decrease la rate of HIV transmission and the stigmatization that people living with HIV/AIDS face.

Each chapter is comprised of a different topic with its own objective.

3 step piropo education process

It didn’t take me a long time in country to come to hate the act of receiving piropos; however, it’s taken me the better part of the past year and a half in country to polish my response. During training I remember mostly hearing the advice that carrying on with my business and ignoring it was best, but that never set well with me. After trying many things (most of which only made people laugh at me), I’ve devised the 3 step pioropo education process.

Piropos in the classroom... what do you do?

Even if it the words weren’t aimed directly towards us, we’ve all heard piropos. Cat calls… Hola mi amor. Chelita bonita. Regálame un beso, mwah! Preciosa. Mírame con esos ojos gatos. Oooh baby. Dame su número. The tone of voice, the leering stares, the kisses and mocking laughter—it’s enough to make your skin crawl right off your body and into a cleansing bleach bath. It’s one thing when piropos come from truck drivers or intoxicated men on the street, but on school grounds, or in the classroom… what do you do?

Volunteers from around the country sound off on how they responded to piropos in the education environment…

Gender in the English Language classroom

I was very excited and surprised in a planning session with one of my counterparts (CPs) because the CP had printed flashcards for presenting different types of sports. Soccer, football, cycling, swimming, tennis, baseball, basketball, volleyball… we were ready to go! Except, then I realized every single picture was of a male athlete. When I brought this to the teacher’s attention, the CP responded “But girls don’t play football.” That’s true, I conceded, but we went on to make a pile of the sports women do play (most of them) and the sports women don’t play (football and baseball).

I don’t think this teacher was intentionally favoring male athletes. My CP was just going with what they see most often, and probably some of the first images that popped up on an online search. It’s an easy thing to do. That got me thinking about all the topics during the year when it’s especially important to be conscious about how we portray gender norms to our students.