We have just returned home after our second briefing weekend at Gillwell Scout Centre in London. This weekend involved farmer costumes and sock puppets (part of our evening entertainment), geocaches, guessing Guyanese fruits and general craziness amongst the planning and preparing. We practiced giving interactive presentations about our country (in preparation to leading workshops when we are in Guyana), worked as a team to create old MacDonald's farm for the Royal variety performance, complete with sock puppets (other teams demonstrated amazing Jackson 5 moves, reality tv, a new take on Cinderella and a good range of singing and dancing talents).
Preparation for our project was an important part of this weekend and we attended training sessions on first aid, accounting and documenting as well as the initial planning of our specific project. The main aims for our project are to run training session for the Guyanese GirlGuides on littering and the environment. While on project we are assisting with the running of the first National Guide camp in Guyana and will start writing the Guide Handbook as a resource that can be used as a resource for members to use in meetings.
The weekend finished with a goodbye to Charlotte the GOLD coordinator who has been involved in GOLD for about 8 years and has been incredible in getting projects started and making a difference to guiding around the world. That sounds soppy but I think it shows that GOLD is fantastic at sharing the opportunities that we have had as Guides in the UK with girls around the world as well as making new friends. On that note our team has increased to 7 members (although our new member does not need a ticket to travel), Charlotte and Anna (the new GOLD coordinator) have given us a mascot to travel with us (picture will follow soon). The only problem is we need a name.
This was our final briefing with the other GOLD teams as our next briefing will be planning our project in more detail. We will see some of the teams at de-brief and look forward to hearing about what everyone else has been doing.
Good luck to all GOLD teams. Have lots of fun.
