Handbook training

Just finished our last couple of days of training at the Pavilion (HQ in Georgetown) where we have been working with the Guyana GOLD team to start planning the Guide Handbook. We ran sessions on determining the chapters (although titles will be changed):
1) What is Girlguiding?
2) History of Girlguiding
3) Guiding Family
4) Fundamental principles (for Guides)
5) Who is a Guide?
6) Caribbean Programme
7) Organisation of units
8) GGG programme and Guide programme.
Chapters 4-8 are specific to the section and can be changed for Brownies/Rangers etc…

We also looked at the front cover of the handbook and the internal layout of the text and to finish the girls worked out a general timeplan of what needs to be done and the order. After the initial fab enthusiasm of before Christmas they agreed ready for the start of the next year so finished and in use by next September. We are all very excited to see the finish book and can't wait to get our copies. It was fab because the team are also excited and it'll be fab to see where they take it.

On the second day we did sessions detailing a little more what is needed in each chapter. We had graffiti walls (a sheet of paper) for each Chapter where they could scribble ideas and thoughts that had to be covered in the chapter. We also have a front cover discussion, I think there are some very creative people in the GOLD team so the look of the handbook inside and out will be fab.

From organising jobs into a timeline yesterday, they decided that the first job was to form a committee so today we ran a couple of sessions on teamwork and leadership (mainly games) and then an activity on what they wanted in their committee. We had a tree that they decorated with post it notes. The roots were people they could go to for support, the trunk were qualities and responsibilities for the whole team and then the branches were individual job roles and the types of skills needed for those jobs. To finish they wrote a job description for each of the roles they wanted for their committee.

We had planned on lots of games and fun to finish with but unfortunately as we started late we weren't able to do as much as we would like but there is always time on camp :)

Our official training has come to an end (sadness) but we are still very much on project (yippee) and today we are heading off for the National camp till Saturday. The focus of the camp will be fun with teamwork, leadership and camp skills, we're all very much looking forward to it. When we get back we have a couple of sessions on evaluation till we finish (very sad) but we shall focus on camp so goodbye for a little while.