The badges have arrived!

I am very excited to let you all know that our GOLD Guyana 2013 Badges arrived today!!!! They are very beautiful...

That means that everyone who has already ordered badges will get them in the post very soon :D


We have also reordered 1000 more badges. So, if you haven't already sent your order form in it is not a problem-we have plenty!

If you need inspiration for summer/ autumn term planning for your unit, why not try our challenge badge pack. There are loads of great ideas for Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Senior Section and adults. Find it here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z1E0Z0q1HuODdNblVxcFBlOTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Lots of GOLD love


Miriam x

Third Briefing- Wow that is a long "to-do" list

This weekend was our third (and final) briefing weekend for Guyana. We met up on Friday night in London at Clare's boyfriends parents house (I know- complicated, but it was amazing- a big thank you from Team GOLD Guyana 2013 to Adrian and your parents).

After long journeys for some of the team  it was lovely to have a relaxed evening and catch up with everything on (as Deborah has mentioned to me several times) "very comfy" sofas. Jess and I were able to recount our eventful tube journey in which we managed to get on the wrong train despite checking several maps and actually knowing which branch of the Northern line wanted to get on. The team have agreed that we are not allowed to travel alone together again!

There was a lot to chat about so it ended up being quite a late night, but once we were all in bed everyone fell asleep very quickly- training for Guyana I think. :)

After an amazing cooked breakfast (thank you Adrian again) we got down to serious planning business. Our aims for the weekend included writing all of our session plans for Guyana, sorting out our kit lists, agreeing on a team budget and discussing all the forms and documentation that we need to organise before we travel to project. Jess had written each element of our to do list on a post it note, which were stuck on a picture of the Union Flag. When we had completed each task we could move the post it onto the Guyana Flag. We were all super excited when we could move actions from one flag to another :D

We spent the morning planning advocacy training  (Deborah, Miriam and Bec) and environment training (Amelia and Clare) by writing session plans. We will use these in Guyana to train Guides. We then all went for a short walk to pick up some fresh bread for lunch and then walked/ power walked back to the house because there were some rather ominous black clouds looming and we did not want to get wet.

After lunch we split into two different groups and planned leadership training for the adult leaders in Guyana (Clare and Bec) and icebreakers, energisers and songs that we will use to make up full days of training (Miriam, Deborah and Amelia). It is amazing how many different camp/ Guiding songs there are! We also all had a look at some Go-For-Its which we will use when we do camp training and just in case our training plans need to change. It was a busy day, but we got a lot of our to-do list ticked off and it was really exciting to see our project take shape :D.

In the evening we changed out of team uniform and went out for a meal together. The little Italian restaurant we went to was very busy but a lovely couple moved onto a smaller table so that we could fit in. The food was really tasty and we had a great time. We decided to skip pudding and instead went back to the house to eat cake, although we didn't eat any cake because we were too busy chatting!

Sunday involved drinking tea in sleeping bags, bacon sandwiches, talking about individual and group kit and moving our last few post it notes from one flag to the other. We also went through the huge amount of forms and the slightly scary risk assessment, as well as ordering 1000 more GOLD Guyana badges whilst eating homemade cake and drinking tea. This means we need to do lots more selling but the response so far has been amazing. Thank you to everyone who has already ordered a badge!!!

After lunch and a quick tidy up and pack all we had to do was evaluate. We all agreed that the weekend was very successful and we are now even more excited about Guyana! We have lot to do before we will be ready but we are definitely getting there.



After lots of hugs and goodbyes at various bus stops/ train stations we were all on our way home. Only 9 weeks to go...

:D

Lots of GOLD love

Miriam xx

Second Briefing- We are all GOLDies and in Guyana we would rather be!

Two weeks ago we had our second briefing weekend with all of the other GOLDies at Linnet Clough Scout Campsite in Stockport.

We arrived in dribs and drabs on the Friday night due to train delays galore (Amelia and Clare), getting lost on the roads down from York (Jess), and a long stressful day at work (Deborah). We were, however, not the only team with logistical difficulties, so tea was delayed until 10 pm. This left myself and Bec to have a good catch up with the other GOLDies over some lively games of cards and a "put a name to the baby face" quiz.

From being a lone pair at the start of tea, gradually our numbers grew. It was really lovely for Team Guyana GOLD 2013 to be reunited once again! Perhaps the most exciting part of the weekend was Jess giving us our beautiful team uniform when we had all arrived. We think its awesome!

After a fairly reasonable nights sleep (disturbed only by a very bright light outside our room window and some noisy beavers wandering past at about 5 am) we had our breakfast and were ready for the days training.

First up was each team giving a 15 minute, interactive training session to all of the other teams about their country and project. Team Guyana were first out of the 8 project countries. We delivered our information using an Articulate style game. Each team was given a bag of words, relating to Guyana and Guiding in Guyana, which one member had to describe to their team mates. Jess did a great demonstration (describing "Georgetown" and "Training"- quite difficult) and everyone got really involved :D. We then explained why we had chosen each word and how it related to GOLD Guyana 2013. For example:

Rainforest- Guyana has one of the largest, unspoiled Rainforests in South America; there is 50 million acres of it! In fact, the Rainforest makes up about 90% of the whole country!

Confidence- Our brief is to help grow Guiding in Guyana. We will do this by helping the leaders we meet to grow in knowledge and confidence. We are nurturing the seeds that previous GOLD teams have planted in Guyana.

We got some really positive feedback as well as some helpful suggestions as to how we can improve when we train in Guyana. The other teams did some great presentations too!

The rest of the day included facilitation training, lots of group time, Stop the Violence Training (a great new resource from WAGGGS- take a look at the website to find out more- http://www.wagggsworld.org/en/take_action/violence ) and a great session run by Hannah (a Guyana GOLDie from 2012 and Girlguiding Peer Educator) about how to plan and deliver successful training sessions. It was a really busy day, but we learnt a lot of really useful things for Guyana and it was a lot of fun :).

Next it was on to our evening "entertainment". We had decided to put new words to the song, "If I were not a Girlguide, there is something I would rather be...", to make it more appropriate to GOLD. So we sang:

"If I were not a GOLDie, there's somewhere else I'd rather be. If I were not a GOLDie in Scotland (Jess)/ India (Clare)/ Hawaii (Amelia)/ Japan (Miriam)/ New Zealand (Bec)/ France (Deborah)."

We had a very short rehearsal before hand so that we could come up with some inspired actions (including pretending to be a train and Frodo). That went surprisingly well! We then changed into our country themed outfits and went to join everyone in the main hall. There were so many great costumes and we laughed away through all the different acts, from a Great British Bake Off spoof by Team Malawi, to country dancing from Team Gambia! Then it was our turn... It all went well until it was my turn (half way through)! I just could not say my line- "Fans and Green Tea, Chopsticks with Sushi". It took me a while to get it out, but when I did I got a huge round of applause!! Then disaster struck again when Be
c hit me in face when trying to act being an aeroplane!!!

Everyone seemed to enjoy it though :D.

We had a really great evening and some really hilarious memories were made.

We were all quite exhausted on Sunday morning but breakfast and an energiser helped wake us up for our role specific trainings. There were 3 sessions on Accounts, First Aid and Documenting which made us all a bit more confident about what we need to do before, during and after project. We had some more group time where we discussed more about what we are actually going to do in Guyana (more on this coming soon!) and things we need to sort out before 3rd Briefing. But all to quickly it was time to pack, have lunch and clean up.

Before it was time to go we all gathered in the hall to say a big thank you to Carrie because she is moving to a new job in a few weeks. We also said goodbye and good luck to all the other teams; the GOLD Guyana 2013 teams will not all meet up together again :(. We watched a video about our GOLD journey from INTOPS to now. There was laughter and a few tears- it is incredible to be part of GOLD!

Third Briefing is this weekend- ahhhh very exciting! More blog posts coming very soon.

Lots of GOLD love

Miriam x