Friday!
Friday morning was filled with final planning and creating resources for our last weekend of training, then a very important last-minute dash to the beach before training (GOLD Aruba 2020: We highly recommend doing this!)
Before training, our wonderful Aruban friend Mirtha brought us lion fish for dinner. The fish is a pest in the waters around Aruba...and it is venomous. Cue small freak out that we weren’t going to be very well after eating it! Thankfully, Mirtha’s friend is an excellent cook, so, we had a really fantastic dinner and would absolutely recommend others try lion fish! After we finished, we found out that none of the APG leaders had ever eaten it!!
The session on Friday evening went incredibly well; the leaders said they found it really useful. We covered different leadership styles - interestingly, the APG is made up of lots of owls…! We then reflected on individual strengths and weaknesses, before everybody wrote strengths on each others sheets - giving each other a pat on the back. How Girl Guiding has helped us in our careers and how to include the skills you learn on a CV followed this. We then played a very funny game of Giants, Elves and Wizards in the dark car park before doing some new activities from the programme the APG developed.
Saturday!
Where else in the world can you spend a morning training on the beach?! We had a great, very hot morning, running teambuilding activities, with a competition between teams. We finished up with a swim in the sea before heading home for a long nap - training on the beach is hard work!
Saturday evening was a chance for a dinner out at the very highly recommended O’Neils. It definitely lived up to the hype! We left very full, and very happy.
Sunday!
Our last day of training with all the APG leaders. Sunday morning was filled with final preparations to deliver an afternoon of action planning, to make sure the APG take all the work they’ve put together over the last three weeks and continue to develop their organisation. The APG formed a committee to further develop the programme and leaders handbook and started to create a project plan. Finally a bit of project evaluation to see what the APG leaders thought of GOLD 2019, and then it was time for some celebrations!
Ten of the amazing leaders we’ve been working with were installed (made their promise as leaders) at a sunset ceremony on the beach, with the Governor’s wife participating.
When we arrived, we were a little concerned that the large group of people having a party with amps on top of their cars might disrupt the proceedings slightly… however, in an amazing turn of events, they agreed to turn off their music while the ceremony was going on! We all renewed our promises together (some of the team might have had to use notes to remember the new promise…) and we gave out some gifts to the wonderful women who have hosted and looked after us over the last three weeks.
Finally, Sunday finished with an excellent meal with lots of APG leaders at a place called Urataka, where there was plenty of chicken, ribs, pizza and chips.
Monday!
Our last day of Project. We attempted to visit the Balashi brewery and bottling plant, however, the plant was only bottling water that day. We felt we’d seen enough of the water processing in our previous tour and instead Louise gave us a hilarious demonstration of water bottling at home.
After planning, we headed to the beach - It was SO EXCITING. There was a huge turtle swimming around in the sea!!! It was amazing to see this beautiful creature up close in the wild, and so lovely that people were very respectful, just letting it get on with life.
Monday evening was our final formal meeting with the APG on evaluation and planning for the future. The general feeling on both sides was that GOLD Aruba 2019 was a resounding success. Yay! A favourite note was that the GOLD team have demonstrated that young people can deliver to a high level and that the APG can give young women the opportunity to do so.
The evaluation meeting finished rather later than planned, so we finished our night with an impromptu celebratory McDonalds - where Louise tried the most aruban item on the menu: a cheeseburger with breaded mushrooms in it (I think. It looked tasty!) - and others tried Grape soda (less tasty, would not recommend)
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