From June 9th – 11th we reunited in
Liverpool for our third (and final face-to-face) briefing weekend. The agenda
was packed but full of fun things as well as the serious business. Here’s our
top three things you should know about what we got up to.
- Team Aruba 2017 Badges Have Arrived…
…and we hope you like the designs. Between us we now have
over 1000 badges in total – including a stock for our participants and new
friends we’ll meet in Aruba. If you’re in the UK and would like to help us will
the final stretch of fundraising, or just love badges (these ones are pretty
cute if we do say so ourselves), these are now available to buy for £1 each +
P&P. Get in touch with the team member you know the best or drop us a message
via our Facebook page and we’ll pop them in the post ASAP.
- You can never have too many resources for inspiration…
…but we need to only take what we might need with us to
Aruba. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning were spent combing through digital
and hard copy versions of resources from WAGGGS, Girlguiding and other youth
organisations in order to prepare activity plans for our training sessions with
Aruban guides, their leaders and women from the community. We’ve made great
headway with over 50 different activities selected so far and will continue to
work on this in pairs over the next six weeks before our next catch up over
skype.
- GOLD Team Aruba is a TEAM (probably the best team).
On Saturday night we headed out into Liverpool to take on
the challenge of Tick Tock Unlock – an escape rooms activity. Together we were
locked in a room full of puzzles and deciphered the clues in (what we were told
is) an impressive 51 minutes to achieve our freedom and the chance to don fancy
dress (as has become our Saturday night custom). We then headed over to Turtle
Bay for some celebratory Caribbean food and a taste of some of the flavours we
might find during our project. I unfortunately cannot share with you the video
of our very impressive dance moves, but safe to say it was another great
bonding experience for our team.
Writing this on the train back to Hull as the weekend comes
to a close, I think it’s safe to say that we are now more than a team assembled
to participate in this project – we are a group of friends who are ready to
seize opportunities and face challenges together to share the value of Guiding and
Scouting with more girls and women around the world.
Stay tuned as our adventure begins…
Pippa
