Culminating Girls Got This in Barangay Guizo

 It seems like yesterday when I had a talk with the barangay captain in Guizo introducing our program, "Girls Got This Works" or GGTW. This program is under the sponsorship of the Australian Aid Embassy where we hold community sessions to girls aged 14 to 17 about self-awareness, physical and mental health, and reproductive health. In other words, we promote girl empowerment to these young girls to be future leaders.

Honestly speaking, I would never thought that we could gather a reasonable number of girls to attend the session amid the pandemic and strict quarantine protocols. In fact, one of the struggles I faced was getting the consent of the authorities and following the quarantine protocols not to mention the internet connection every time we hold the session. 

Virtual Mentorship

I realized one day why I felt so exhausted each time I finished a session. I had been doing training and sessions even before I worked as a social development worker. But I always come home these days feeling so tired while opted to sleep rather than eat in the evening. Then, I thought of our mentorship set-up. 

Although I could say our communication nowadays have been very convenient and accessible, there were moments where I preferred having a face-to-face training than series of virtual webinars. The struggle of connecting to the other line because of the unstable internet connection added up to my stress during the session. The set-up every time we had our session was this way: I facilitate and the mentors from Tacloban delivers the entire session. In other words, our session all depend with the internet connection. 

Leadership and Physical Fitness

The last session tackled about leadership and its meaning. The girls were presented with different photos of leaders in the Philippines and the other parts of the world. The girls were quick to identify the Philippine president and the vice-president while most of the international leaders were left unknown. So the aim of the session is to encourage young girls to choose leaders who have good qualities such as humility, being a good listener and a responsible person.

Other than that, the girls also had a yoga session. I could see from their face how excited they were even before meeting their yoga teacher. The girls verbalized that it would be their first time to even try yoga. 

One girl said something which truly caught my attention. She said, "Pangdatu ra man na ang Yoga, Ate."

Hearing from that little girls' words, I could only think the great divide between the rich and poor. These girls already have a concept what it means to have nothing. 

So our yoga class started. It was at that moment when I saw their genuine smiles and their appreciation of what they were doing. The girls became very participative and the room became incredibly noisy in a good way. Those were sounds of girls who were deprived of their privilege and finally did something that could lift them up. 

I didn't dare to say goodbye to the girls because I would feel guilty of leaving them. For sure, I will miss them and hoping that I would meet them in the coming days or years who are already successful. From August until October, the mentorship session ended with something the girls couldn't forget. 

May they grow up to be confident and empowered women.

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