Belarus

2006 saw six Girlguiding UK participants travel to Eastern Europe as a part of GOLD. We travelled to the beautiful lake area of Braslav in the north of Belarus to deliver trainings to 50 members of Belarussian guiding.
These camp-based workshops included:

• Girlguiding UK themes (leadership, structure, programme planning, resources, Senior Section and the five essentials.
• WAGGGS theme from Rights of the Child (working from Girlguiding UK’s publication, Right Now!)
• Self-esteem

The aim of the project was to instil a clear understanding of what guiding is with the hope that more people would become active members of the organisation. In training Guides and Leaders, we felt that we gave a real sense of identity of what guiding is about. This became very clear to the UK members from the way in which the girls had developed, especially by the end of our project.  This gave a strong impression of what international Guiding is all about.

Fiji

The 2006 Fiji Project was the first year GOLD had visited the South Pacific. This was a joint venture with four UK Leaders and four Guides New Zealand Leaders, travelling throughout the main two Fijian islands.

The aim of our project was to develop and build up guiding by running events for both girl members and adults. Our project had a three-way approach: a Guide camp, two Commissioner trainings and six activity-based school visits. As guiding is based in schools the main aim of the school visits was to provide support for Leaders who were running Guide units with very sparse resources. Therefore, we aimed to deliver activities, games, and crafts that could be carried out with local resources. Our trainings were delivered to groups ranging from 50 to well over 100! The themes covered at all of the trainings were varied. The main topics covered were HIV/AIDS awareness, building self-esteem, planning large-scale Guiding events, fun crafts and songs to do with your unit. 

The Fijian people were truly inspirational and everywhere we went we were welcomed with the word 'Bula!', which means hello. They were bursting with enthusiasm and keen to develop guiding to benefit the needs of their girls.

Honduras

The Guias de Honduras is an Association much smaller than ours, with around 5,000 members. We travelled there in late November and were welcomed by a group of Leaders and Guides, who were our hosts for the following weeks. We worked alongside these Leaders and ran activities for girls and young women aged 10-18.

The name of our project was 'Discovering my Potential' and it focussed on self-esteem, positive body images and healthy relationships, with a specific emphasis on HIV/AIDS. These subjects were well received by the Association as a whole but particularly by the participants.

There was a lot of travelling on our project, whether it was by car, bus, van or boat and by the end of our trip we had covered a large proportion of the country.  We started the project with three activity days, with between 20-40 guides at each. Each of these days was at a different venue for different participants. We found that by the third day we were at ease in our surroundings and were thoroughly enjoying our time in Honduras.

Next we were off to camp! We ran two camps for between 40-70 Guias. This was a fantastic opportunity for us to work continuously with a group; building relationships and friendships with our Patrols and the Leaders. At the end of our three weeks in Honduras, we could look back at the happy time we spent there, the friends we had made and how much of a success the project had been. I think that each one of us, Honduran or British, learnt something about discovering our potential.

Madagascar

The GOLD project to Madagascar in 2006 was a collaboration between the UK GOLD contingent of six team members and five Malagasy Mpanazava Guiders. As a team of eleven, we worked in harmony to deliver effective, sustainable trainings in order to promote guiding within the country. Delivering trainings both at a national level at the National Guide Camp and the National Leaders’ Camp, and at a local level with trainings for individual Guide units as well as village children, ensured that our trainings reached a wealth of different audiences and age groups. One of the primary focuses of our project was to train on issues based on the ‘Our Rights, Our Responsibilities’ programme such as self-esteem and happiness - issues which are crucial for young women. We also trained on a whole host of other topics such as personal hygiene, teaching English as a foreign language, traditional guiding, problem-solving and crafts.  Madagascar is such a beautiful country and it would be nearly impossible to receive a warmer welcome elsewhere. The long-lasting friendships formed with the Mpanazava, the warm smiles of appreciation from the leaders, the uncontrollable laughter from the guides as we taught them yet another crazy song  and even some lemur-spotting thrown in for good measure, all added up to make this an unforgettable experience!

South Africa

In 2006, the South Africa project saw a change of direction towards HIV/AIDS awareness. Six UK Leaders spent three weeks training young women of the Girl Guide Association of South Africa (GGASA) in how to teach HIV/AIDS awareness and self-esteem. We dealt with many aspects of the issue, ranging from basic biology and myths, to the ABC of AIDS prevention (Abstain, Be faithful, Condomise), and issues around the discrimination and stigmatisation of people who are found to be HIV positive. The project started with a week long peer-education training at the National Centre of the GGASA, in Johannesburg. Here we trained young women from all over the country so that they could go back to their own guiding communities and in turn train people there. From here we continued on to spend time training Guides, Rangers and adults in a range of hugely contrasting settings: from the more affluent suburbs of Johannesburg, to bustling townships such as Soweto and Katlehong, and to the rural villages of Rustenburg and Pilanesburg in North West Province.

This project provided the opportunity to allow young women to talk freely about an issue which is so much part of daily life for many South Africans, and yet is feared and stigmatised. The participants were enthusiastic in trainings, and very positive and pragmatic when considering the role of guiding in this issue.

As a team we were always made to feel welcome, and felt very lucky to have experienced such extremes of South African life. All in all, it was a fantastic opportunity to experience a culture so different from our own and to be able to give something back to our wonderful hosts!

Thailand

In October 2006 two teams from opposite sides of the world met in Thailand. Four of us came from Australia and four from the UK, but not long after we met we stopped being two teams of four and became a team of eight, taking on a project which was an opportunity of a lifetime.

Guiding in Thailand is very different to that in the UK. It is run in schools with teachers as Leaders and guiding is often compulsory for the girls in the school. The structure, based on school lessons with hundreds of girls at each guiding lesson, was a lot more formal than most guides in this country can ever imagine. They learnt the Promise and the laws by writing them out in exercise books. 

We stayed in Bangkok, the capital, for about ten days. Here we trained Leaders and girls. Then we moved north to Chiang Mai, where we trained Leaders again and then held camp for senior Guides. Each training lasted 4 days and during that time we each did our sessions. We trained on topics ranging from time management and programme-planning to self-esteem and AIDS/HIV awareness. However, we seemed to adopt a new topic which no-one had asked us to train on, learning by doing. We never specifically trained on this, but taking our style of training into such a formal setting, this became our main message. When we received feed-back from the leaders and the girls we really knew our messages had been received and our trainings had reached the people who needed them.

We also had time for a cultural exchange evening with each group. We shared a dance, a craft and a song from our countries. So we learnt a lot about Australia as well as Thailand. One of the highlights was a campfire at the end of the camp. We lit candles and sang songs everyone knew the words to. Then we renewed our Promise.