(Recruiting More) Leaders of Aruba

Aruba has so many amazing volunteers working to support the work of the APG, and during our three weeks here we want to introduce you to some of them. So we will be taking portraits of some of the inspiring leaders we meet and telling you their stories. First up we have:

Angela, 18. Angela met us at the airport when we first arrived, helped to orientate us to the island and then participated in both days of our training for leaders this weekend. She has been involved in the APG for 13 years and is now a confident young woman preparing to vote in the elections for the first time. She now uses the skills she learnt as a Padvindster in her role as a Pioneer and leader with younger girls.

In order for APG to grow and for more girls to benefit from what guiding and scouting can offer, the organisation are looking to recruit more volunteers. We explored some of the ways we might do this in our second day of leader training and here we’ve created a list five of the ways we use in the UK that we talked about with links to useful resources.

1. Flyers, posters and postcards. In the training we talked about the value of talking to people face to face about guiding, but then being able to give them a business card or a flyer so they could get in touch again and find out more. In the UK, our guiding shop make posters, flyers and postcards that can be ordered for the cost of postage so that local units can use them to recruit more girls and adults. A selection of these can be viewed here
2. Presence at events. Having a presence at events is a great way to be seen. In the training we talked about national days and annual holidays like Mothers’ Day when APG members wear their smart uniforms and are visible in the community.
3. Social media and videos. We also discussed how we can use video in particular (through social media) to enable more people to see what guiding is all about. We showed two videos from Girlguiding UK (this one and this one) as inspiration, and Angela made this awesome one of our training session.
4. Involving students. Rachel talked about how her county in the UK work with the local university to encourage students to volunteer and Girlguiding UK have published this advice. Leaders were keen on this idea and thought it might also work well at the university in Aruba. 
5. Building a website. We find, in the UK, that its really useful to have a website where you can keep information about who to contact about joining guiding, what it’s all about and upcoming events. There’s some easy to use free hosts on the internet like this blogger site that our blog is hosted on, or www.weebly.com have some free packages.

Do you have any top tips on recruitment? What’s worked for you? Add them in the comments on here, Facebook or tweet us! 

Everyone Loves a Game of Elephant Football!

Two days of project delivery down and we’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with 21 leaders from Het Arubaanse Padvindsters Gilde so far: on Friday night we met the board and on Saturday we’ve delivered our first day of training for leaders on the island.

Saturday’s training took place at the APG clubhouse in Dakota with 17 leaders in attendance, representing a wide spread of ages and different units from across Aruba. Our activities focus on guiding principles, WAGGGS and promoting the opportunities offered by guiding, and our energisers in particular went down really well. Here’s a run down of some of the most highly rated (in smiles and laughter) of those energisers:

• Elephant Football: Standing in a circle everyone spreads their legs wide so their feet are touching their neighbours. Using your arms as a trunk you have to block the ball as it is knocked across the circle. If it goes through your legs you’re out and the circle gets smaller.
• Get Loose: This repeat after me song. This repeat after me song. Is Mirtha’s favourite. Is Mirtha’s favourite. And she lead it for us during the session to much applause.
• Me too: An icebreaker where someone in the centre of the circle shouts out a fact about themselves. If the fact also applies to you, you try and swap places with someone else and not get left as the last one in the middle.
• Human knot: Everyone holds hands with two other people across the circle (not those standing next to you) and then try and untangle yourselves back into a circle. This one needs problem solving and good communication skills.

During the session we also used some resources to introduce WAGGGS – including a card sort activity we first learnt at one of our briefing weekends. You can download that cards for this activity from here. We had some great feedback about how much had been learnt about WAGGGS during the session, but these are two of our favourite comments:

  

On Sunday we hope to see lots of familiar faces again and a few new ones for day two of leader training!

Live in Aruba and not currently involved in guiding? We have two sessions that are open to all where you can come along and find out more about the organisations. Both are 6-9pm, and we are at YMCA Dakota on the 6^th September and YMCA San Nicolas on the 7^th September. 

P.S. We've been making headway with our trip challenges: today Pippa met Rose-Ann who attended the World Scout Jamboree in the Netherlands in 1995 as a young member, we all did some yoga in the pool for Bridget's challenge, and Helen has been practising her hand-stand in the (relative) safety of the pool.