Second briefing

Games and giggles (with some serious training in between)

Second briefing in April found us making our way up north (or down south for some of the team!) to Bramhope, near Leeds. Most of us arrived late into the night to find the campsite surrounded by a wreath of rather surreal fog.

Luckily, Saturday morning dawned much brighter and we were able to get on with our day - packed to the brim with trainings and plannings!

The first thing we were met with was the sad news that (unsurprisingly), Team Ukraine's GOLD project would not be going ahead this year due to events in the host country. They still proceeded to deliver a very entertaining and informative session on guiding in the Ukraine - through the medium of lentils!

Team Ukraine's session

The rest of the teams also delivered interactive sessions on guiding in their host country. Our training on Peru involved making Peruvian-themed shapes out of the people in the team, as well as (re)learning how to tie friendship knots - alongside a more serious presentation on the challenges faced by our host association in Peru.

Team Malawi being Machu Picchu - complete with selfie-taking tourists!

Team Ukraine tying friendship knots

After a morning of learning all about the other countries that GOLD is going to this year, we had a great training session on how to deliver trainings by a 4 Peer Educator, involving a rather messy jam sandwich game.

A trainer from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (also know as WAGGGS) came to refresh our knowledge of the structure and organisation of the world association and to remind us of all the great resources that WAGGGS provides for leaders and girls across the world. Lots of these will come in useful when we plan our trainings for Peru!

After that, we had some more team time, where we started to get the nitty gritty details of our project down on paper (and eat lots of biscuits).

To round off our jam-packed afternoon, we had sessions on working with interpreters and facilitation skills from our leader Caroline, Anna and Carly.

By dinner time, the trainings were starting to take their toll - but things soon got more lively, as our Saturday evening entertainment this time was a Big Brownie Birthday party!

Team Peru as Brownies

Carly, Anna and our cooks for the weekend

Being GOLDies, there had to be themed games to go along with the fancy dress. Each team had come up with some challenges based around different Brownie badges.

There was dancing (for the entertainer badge), a relay race to plan a party (for the hostess badge), Good Evening Friend Brownie - international style (for the world traveller badge), a country-themed trash fashion competition (for the designer badge), a sack race around some books (for the booklover badge), cream pies (for the circus skills badge), a swimming race involving flippers and bubbles (for the swimmer's badge) and yet more dancing (this time for the dancer badge)! 

Some of the trash fashion designs

Circus skills badge

After that, we just had the energy to pose for a group shot and a quick tidy-up before we collapsed into bed!

The final group shot of all the 2014 GOLDies

On the Sunday, we woke up nice and early to crack on with our training. First, we learnt more about what our group roles involved.

There was a training for all the documenters on PR and photography, a finance training for leaders and treasurers and a first aid training (in a teeny cupboard of a room that was on the warm side...).

The rest of the weekend was mostly 'team time', when we started to brainstorm ideas for the topics we're delivering trainings on in Peru - leadership skills, training skills and recruitment and retention, both for the national board and the local councils.

We ended the day with an inspirational talk from Anna, the GOLD Co-ordinator, and a slideshow of photos of our GOLD journey so far.

As we trekked home, heads full of these inspirational words, we could hardly wait for third briefing - find out what happened there in the next instalment of our blog!

Lots of GOLD love,
Team Peru