Canadian & World Guiding

The first two weeks of February were spent learning about Guiding in Canada and around the World. 

Our first meeting opened with an activity in patrols as the girls arrived. Each patrol had to create a list of all the things they use at school. We then started the meeting with our usual opening and an active game. 

As an introduction to our Going Global Service Project (and our Thinking Day Service Project), we discussed education around the world, including facts from the 2014 World Thinking Day Activity Pack. Then we went through the lists the patrols had made and narrowed the list down to the bare necessities that are collected and made into School Kits by the Mennonite Central Committee. (Each girl took home a flyer about donating these supplies - notebooks, pencils, erasers, pencil crayons and rulers.)

Next we did a participation story about the history of Guiding, followed by a relay game about the youth branches of Guiding in Canada. Each patrol had to gather and match cards to show the branch name, t-shirt, age group and enrolment pin for Sparks, Brownies, Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers.


After this, we sat down to discuss people and roles in Guiding. We learned about Lones, Pathfinders, Guiders, Link, Trefoil Guild, ACLs, and Trainers. We ended the evening with the 3rd Year Guides starting to work on a poster about Agnes, Olave and Robert Baden-Powell while the 1st and 2nd Year Guides played a Guiding Symbols Board Game.


Our second meeting started with an arrival activity where each patrol looked through magazines and found out some of the things that Guides did in the 1950s. The girls were surprised to find out that we still do many of the same things, just in different ways. We then had our usual opening and an active game (Link Tag).

We then learned about the history of Guiding in Canada, with each girl reading out one fact - we have 16 girls, so there are 16 history facts:

1910	Guiding begins! Companies are started in Toronto, St Catharines, Moose Jaw, Sardis (BC), Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Dawson (YT)
1911	The first Guide Camp is held. Guides from the 1st Toronto Company camp on the banks of the Credit River in June.
1914 to 1918	During World War I, Canadian Guides give service by working in munitions factories and government offices, volunteering in hospitals, knitting socks, and making dressings and bandages.
1924	35 Canadian Guides, Rangers and Guiders attend the first International Camp at Foxlease in England
1927	The first Girl Guide Cookies are sold. They are baked by a Guider, Christine Riepsame of Regina, and sold by the 4th Regina Guides to raise money for their activities
1928	The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts is formed with Canada as a Founding Member. Today, there are 145 member countries.
1935	Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visit Canada. While in Alberta, Lady Baden-Powell meets members of the Sarcee Nation and is given the name “Otter Woman”.
1945	The Canadian World Friendship Fund (CWFF) is set up. The Fund is used to support Guiding projects and programs around the world, including the World Centres, the World Thinking Day Fund, and projects in developing countries designed to improve the lives of girls and young women within their communities.
1953	Chocolate and Vanilla Girl Guide Cookies are first sold.
1962	The National Office at 50 Merton Street, Toronto is opened. Brownies, Guides, Rangers and Guiders ‘built’ the office by purchasing square inches for $0.10 each
1979	Pathfinders begin. The age groups are now Brownies 6 to 9, Guides 9 to 12, Pathfinders 12 to 15 and Senior Branches (Rangers, Cadets and Junior Leaders) 15 to 17+
1988	A new branch for 5-year-olds is started. They will be named Sparks in 1989.
1992	Girl Guide and Astronaut Dr. Roberta Bondar becomes the first Canadian woman in space. She takes her Brownie Wings and Girl Guide Cookies into space on board the Space Shuttle Discovery.
1993	Chocolately Mint Cookies are first sold.
2005	The new Guide Program, “Guides on the Go” is introduced. The highest award for Guides is the Lady Baden-Powell Challenge.
2010	Guiding worldwide celebrates 100 years. Since 1910, over 7 million Canadian girls and women have been at part of Guiding.

Next we played a 'find your partners' game using the World Thinking Day Focus Countries - Armenia, Bangladesh, Benin, Egypt and St Vincent & the Grenadines. Each girl had a card with either the National Flag, Guide Uniform or Guiding Logo for one of these countries. We then had the girls make groups by type (flags, uniforms, logos), something in common (i.e. colours), and finally for each country, so that we could look at and compare the flag, uniform and logo for each country. 

We then divided into groups, with the 3rd Year Guides continuing to work on their poster about Agnes, Olave and Robert Baden-Powell, while the 1st and 2nd Year Guides divided into four groups to make posters about the World Centres - Our Chalet, Pax Lodge, Our Cabana and Sangam. We also talked about the 5th World Centre Pilot Project in Africa. All of the girls will finish their posters at our February 25th meeting.

Our last activity was a game from New Zealand called Sheep Tag. In this game, one girl is 'it'. When she tags another girl, they have to lie on the ground on their bag and wave their feet in the air while saying "baaa baaa" in a pitiful sheep voice. Other players can free them by tagging their foot and saying "She'll be right Mate!" ("She'll be right Mate" is a saying that basically means everything will work out fine in the end.)

At the end of the meeting we had just enough time to sing a couple of songs and so we sang Kookaburra (which everyone knew) and Tzena (which only a few people knew).

We continued our World Guiding theme at our Chemistry Badge meetings. The girls finished up their posters at the first meeting and then presented them to the rest of the unit at the second meeting. Here are the girls' posters: