Helen's blog

August 2009

My GOLD project is over I have been to Chile and made it back below is GOLD Chile in a nutshell.

After a delay in Madrid for a week with no luggage we finally made it to Santiago where we were thrown straight into our GOLD project with face painting hundreds of children at an activity day- 5 colours and fingers only. We met the International Commissioner for Chile and the Chief Scout. We then moved down south to Valdivia where we worked in some local schools trying to recruit some new Guides-amazing fun and we even met a Lord and Lady! We then travelled back to Santiago where it was time to get ready for the main part of the project which was our weekend camp. We set off and the rain came, it was a brilliant but wet and cold weekend with 120 girls and 60 adults. We trained them in self esteem, women empowerment and WAGGGS. At the end of the camp we were made members of the Guias y Scouts de Chile. It was then onto Via del Mar by way of sitting in the boot of a car where we had a couple of days rest meeting some guides and adults to talk about Guiding in the UK. We then moved onto Concepcion where we again visited 2 schools and worked on recruitment. Back to Santiago for our final evaluation with Pia the International Commissioner and a farewell party. We got back to the UK without any further mishaps and all too soon it was time to say goodbye to each other although not for long as debrief is only 2 weeks away and counting. Los tiempos buenos.

Chile was an amazing experience and you can read more about it on our blog http://goldchile2009.blogspot.com. I would definitely recommend GOLD to anyone who wants a challenge so look out for next INTOPS weekend on the website!

Straight after GOLD it was off to Division Camp, a pirate themed camp where I joined the crew of Neptunes Revenge and planned the night activity, back in civilisation its time to start sorting myself out for University which is coming up quick in September very exciting times.