Harpswell Foundation (Community Youth Project)

Part of my volunteer service includes working with the Community Youth Development sector. There's a small group of us that are labeled under this sector and from my understanding we're also the last group to be working under the CYD title. There are a few advantages to be working under this title but at the same time it really doesn't make any difference because no matter what, most volunteers (health and education) end up doing community projects with a great deal of youth and community involvement. However, one of the special perks working under this title is that we get to have a choice to break away from teaching in the classrooms and work with an NGO (Non Government Organization). I, however, do not have this luxurious choice since I live in a very rural area and there are no NGO's located anywhere near I live. I will continue teaching in the classrooms under a routine schedule and try to come up with other projects that my students want to get more involved with. It would be nice to find a position with an NGO that would help me get more involved with project design and development but I'm happy to have the freedom of choice to design my own projects at my site.
So now that I've explained what the CYD program is all about  let me share with you an amazing project that we CYD peeps got to work on. We provided a two day workshop for an all girl academy called the Harpswell Foundation. It's an amazing organization (http://harpswellfoundation.org/')  that provides free housing, education, and leadership training to the most brightest and amazing young women in Cambodia. We partnered up with them and provided courses that can help empower these young ladies in different subjects areas, such as: goal setting, healthy relationships,study skills, gender empowerment, womens nutritional health, yoga and self defense. I got to team up with a great gal pal of mine and we conducted our workshop on confidence building. We provided tools on how to be aware when one may have low levels of self confidence and how one may be able to increase their levels of self esteem by doing self reflection activities with art and journal writing. I'm really happy on how much these girls got out of our workshops and how advanced they were able to think on a critical level. It was a very endearing experience and I'm so fortunate to have had the opportunity to work such an awesome group of people. I really enjoyed listening to their presentations and hearing what the girls responses were.