In 2024, we proudly brought GLOW Club back to Bitola after a pandemic pause, reuniting and inspiring a new generation of young girls through workshops on leadership, volunteering, communication, and practical skills. Building on that strong foundation, 2025 takes the journey further with fresh topics, deeper learning, and even more growth opportunities.

In 2025, we continued organizing workshops for young girls, focusing on new and previously uncovered topics of interest to them.

The seventh session was on the topic of Emotional Intelligence, led by psychologists Biljana Tolevska Naumovska and Orhideja Robevska. This session expanded the girls’ knowledge of the definition of emotional intelligence (EI), its core concepts and its origins. An interactive psychodrama exercise followed, involving all participants, encouraging them to share personal experiences and deepen their understanding of the topic. The session ended with very positive impressions and a collective commitment to invest more in self-development.

For the eighth session, we chose yoga. To our great satisfaction, many of the girls were experiencing and benefiting from this type of personal growth activity for the first time. Our yoga instructor was Bojana Artinovska, who generously shared her knowledge during a two-hour introduction to yoga with specific exercises. These exercises were later selected for implementation in our upcoming GLOW camp. The yoga session energized the girls and motivated them to continue practicing at home if they enjoyed the experience.

The ninth session, focused on Social Entrepreneurship, was led by an experienced social innovator Anita Gagovska. This was something completely new as a topic and unfamiliar to our girls. Through several icebreaker and scenario-based games, we dove deeper into the topic, with each girl identifying challenges in her environment and exploring potential innovative solutions. The overarching goal of the GLOW club is to increase the involvement of young girls in everyday social life, encouraging them to face challenges and actively engage in solving them in real-life situations.

We wrapped up this cycle of the GLOW club with the 10th and final session on the topic of finance literacy led by Jeff Spencer, a Peace Corps volunteer who shared a piece of his rich career experience with us. Throughout his life, he has worked as a manager, professor, financial advisor, and insurance agent. The session covered a wide range of age-appropriate financial topics: the basics of finance, effective money management, types of savings, debt, investments for the future, and more. The girls had the chance to gain new knowledge, ask many questions to a financial expert, and receive firsthand answers.

With these ten diverse sessions dedicated to the personal growth and career development of young girls in our city, expanding their horizons, and encouraging them to participate in volunteer activities for greater societal involvement, we laid the foundation for the continued existence and progress of this club. In June this year, we plan to organize a three-day GLOW camp, where these girls, along with new interested participants, will bring back the spirit of past camps.

So far, we believe that our GLOW club has had a positive impact on the girls who attended our sessions. Through ten sessions, we covered a wide range of topics to educate and prepare participants for their next steps in life. We eagerly look forward to continuing this wonderful project in the fall of 2025 with hopes of its expansion!