Ahebwa Teddy

Over the last several months I, along with a few friends, have been busy creating and organizing a girl’s empowerment camp to take place in December. At this moment, we have over 150 girls from all over Uganda enrolled, 15 Ugandan woman counselors and 15 PCV counselors. Every PCV was given the opportunity to nominate girls from their communities to attend Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). The girls had to write 4 essays, a BIG challenge for many students as they have very poor English reading and writing skills. The questions were:

1. Name three changes you would make in your community if you became a village headwoman in your area and why.
2. How do you try to be a good Ugandan citizen and why is it important?
3. If you had a 10-year-old sister, what advice would you offer on how to become a successful woman in Uganda?
4. Why do you want to attend Camp GLOW?

Several of my girls were chosen to attend Camp GLOW. Ahebwa Teddy, a P6 day scholar from Gayaza, was thrilled to be picked. Here is an excerpt of what Ahebwa Teddy wrote:

Regarding advice to a 10-year-old sister: “I would advise her to be clean and to focus on her health not only her health, but also learn to be helpful to others. If you focus on your education you can probably achieve what you want. For example, when you wants to be a leader you can focus on your education and learn how village leaders lead their people from them you can courage an what you can do.”

Regarding being a good Ugandan citizen: “You need to teach how to be a good woman. It’s not your fault if you have parents who never cared about you. Now you need to live but if you join friends in good groups like friends who care about others by providing the needy the little you have you can be good. If you help a needy person you can gain respect from them and that can be done in different ways like if you have two dresses and you can give one to your friend who doesn’t have and this can also help you as a human being to gain respect.
To also be a good citizen you need to be discipline person that is by greeting people, helping them by washing their clothes and your family can be determined as a respective family.”

*There were no typo’s in Ahebwa’s writing. I typed it exactly as she wrote it.