Training Trainers and Cloth Genitalia
(an article written for our Peace Corps Panama Newsletter)
“I am just dying to
give this charla,” Rosalba pleaded desperately. “I feel like it’s inside me,
and I just need to get it out!” I paused
to take in this remark for a moment. We were in the middle of a Project,
Management, and Leadership training and my often indifferent student was
suddenly spilling over with enthusiasm. “HIV is soooo
important”, she emphasized her words in the way only a determined 17
year-old can. “We have to teach more people, Natalie!”
“Ok”, I said still in shock, “I agree. Let’s make a plan.”
When I arrived in Panama, I had no prior experience teaching
sexual health. I scoured the internet for videos of Peace Corps Volunteers and
routinely came across clips of eager volunteers teaching a class of youngsters
or a group of adults huddled under a shady tree with familiar diagrams of
reproductive systems behind them. This is how I imagined a PCV, and yet, I
could NOT imagine myself teaching The Birds and The Bees and proper condom use,
especially in Spanish. It just seemed way beyond my skillset; I was convinced I
lacked the KSAs.
Jump forward a year and a half later and you find me in
front of a huge group of Gad Campers, adorning a lovely, hand-crafted felt
penis with felt sexually-transmitted infections. “Yes, this one will burn a
bit,” I explained in Spanish, and with a straight face (if you have seen these
notorious felt genitals in Gad’s possession you will understand why this last
part is a huge achievement). At the time, I was amazed by how cliché this
moment seemed as far as “typical” Peace Corps experiences go. I also realized
how far I’d come since the days of my pre-service insecurities. What I
admittedly didn’t consider in that moment however, became far more important. I didn’t think about the great and unexpected
impact my boldness would have on my 2 campers.
Since Gender and Development Youth Camp concluded in January
2013, Rosalba and Oliver, both age 17, have partnered with Muchachas Guias to
deliver HIV/AIDS presentations using Vida Sana, Pueblo Sano materials to
two neighboring communities and their schools, with plans to cover even more
territory in the near future. They have mobilized a group of their friends,
family and their profesora to assist in these interactive trainings. They have
organized transportation, and once when it proved unavailable, they walked 2
hours and crossed a river to give their presentation. With practice, they have
overcome fits of giggles and learned how to successfully facilitate a sensitive
topic to audiences young and old.
The moral of this story is profound. To make our work as
volunteers sustainable, we need to think of every charla or even deep
conversation with an attached lesson as an opportunity to become a Trainer or
Trainers. Sometimes we may not feel up
for this challenge, and our insecurities about not being “experts” seem
insurmountable. Despite this, we forge onward, we make grammatical mistakes,
and we hope that some seed of knowledge sticks in fertile ground. I couldn’t be
more proud of Rosalba and Oliver. I feel even prouder to be able to witness
their accomplishments as young leaders and educators and share them with the
Peace Corps Panama community.
So the next time you
think you can’t teach to train future trainers, remember this: you never know
who you may empower to invoke personal behavioral change, and better yet, become
a teacher to inspire others to do the same.
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his
influence stops.” –
Henry Books Adams, American journalist, historian and academic.
