GEE? Whats That?

So, what’s a GEE volunteer? What exactly do you do? I’ve written several blogs describing life in Africa and my life in general. However, I have not written anything about why I’m here: to work. Part of it is that as a new volunteer my main job the last two months at Asrama has been to learn about my village, set up my home, conduct a study of village, meet homologues, and general integration.

You cannot just walk into a village and say, “I’m here! Let’s get to work.” I’m a stranger and the first step to helping my community here is to get to know them. What are their needs? How are things done here? What resources are available? Also, just learning how to live (the day to day necessary stuff like food, water, clean clothes) in Africa is a full time job without adding on starting GEE work.

Another big part of the first few months at post is to shadow another volunteer. My closest fellow GEE volunteer is Jes. I was able to travel to a village called Mamakope where she co-conducted a local weekend camp for girls with Lisa the volunteer of Mamakope. These were local girls from villages nearby who got to take part in this camp. They had sessions covering topics like Confidence, VIH/SIDA, child trafficking, and relationship skills. It was great to have to opportunity to experience that.

After spending a couple of months in village Peace Corps sends us (everyone from my stage) to Pagala for In Service Training (IST). When I was in Tsevie we had what is called Pre-Service Training. Tsevie was mostly language based with an introduction to GEE work. Now, at Pagala we have technical training.

Which brings me back to what is a GEE volunteer. Girl’s Empowerment and Education is a rather abstract concept to promote. Gender roles are very rigid here in Togo. Women do domestic work and men go to their jobs or to the farm. The idea is to promote education for girls, empower them and women, as well as encourage gender equality. How do we go about this? Well basically we learn how to be a “jack of all trades” and often have a wide variety of projects.

We work with students, teachers, Patrons (the head of a trade skill who teaches apprentices . . . so hairdressing, tailor, bush taxi driver), apprentices, and men. We teach Life Skills, Men as Partners, form Clubs at schools, teach AGRs (Activities generatrice de Revenue), form village savings and loans programs, teach about HIV/AIDS, Take Our Daughters to Work, Women’s Conference, Camp Unite, Camp Espoire (for children effected by AIDS), Camp Girls and Science, and many other projects. As a GEE volunteer I’m very free in my options for projects to work on at village.   

I learned a lot at Pagala and it has given me many ideas for things that would be great in Asrama. So now I need  to take back the ideas and projects that interest me most and find out if the people of Asrama are interested in them or not. I’ll also need to find good work partners to aide me.  

When I get back the concrete game plan is to start teaching at the lycee. It’s been decided with the Provisor (headmaster) that I will take time out from classes to teach a GEE specific class with the help of my Lycee counterpart, Mr. Bikore, the science teacher. I plan on combining topics and lessons from Life Skills and Men as Partners (which is great for teaching gender equality topics). I will also be helping down at the hospital and in particular on baby weighing day. Eventually, I will teach GEE topics to the mothers there. I would like to start clubs at the Lycee as well. Right now I am thinking either a girls science club (girls are not encouraged to do science and it would be an excellent opportunity for them) or a general girls club with a free range of topics. I plan on getting input from my Provisor and counterparts. I am also interested in Village Savings and Loan Program. It’s a great way to help women fund small projects and is an extremely sustainable project. My predecessor did a MAP formation with teachers and I would like to follow up on that.   

Now with all my ideas and further technical training I’m excited to get back to Asrama and start getting the ball rolling.