Tonight we celebrated the 5th Annual International Day of the Girl!In honour of this special day, Girl Guides of Canada produced an Instant Meeting focusing on Girls and Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) that had lots of interesting activities. As our unit regularly runs STEM-related activities, we decided to work on the WAGGGS #TeamGirl Challenge instead.
Download the GGC Instant Meeting
Download the WAGGGS #TeamGirl Challenge
As the girls arrived, they played a tag game, after which we practiced forming a Horseshoe. One of the Guides led a game of Hot Dog Tag before we started our evening's program.
The #TeamGirl Challenge is divided into three parts: Team Discover, Team Build and Team Action. We completed Team Discover and Team Build, and began work on the Team Action section.
Team Discover
To begin our program, we talked briefly about the 17 Global Goals set by the United Nations in 2015 to end poverty, fight climate change and tackle all forms of inequality by 2030. We explained how Guiding members around the world were taking part in the #TeamGirl Challenge to learn more about these issues and make a difference in their own communities. We then introduced the NSP: Action on Poverty and talked about how through this project, Canadian Guiding members are addressing Goal #1 No Poverty.
Our first activity was Factors Leading to Poverty from the GGC NSP Instant Meeting. We divided the girls into 3 colour groups - 70% yellow, 20$ red and 10% blue. Everyone then lined up across the centre of the room and we read out a series of statements from the meeting plan. For each statement, the girls had to take a certain number of steps forwards or backwards, depending on the colour of their card. Once we had finished, we had a reflection discussion about what the girls thought and felt during the activity and what statements stood out the most to them.
Our second activity was What Is Poverty Like? from Together We Can (Girlguiding UK, 2011). For this activity, the girls were divided up into groups of four and asked to describe poverty using their senses.
- Sight - How do others see you? What are your surroundings?
- Sound - What do others say to you? What background noises surround you?
- Smell - What kind of food is cooked around you? What is happening around you?
- Taste - What kinds of food do you eat?
- Feel - Where do you live? What is it like there? What emotions do you feel?
Team Build
For the Team Build section, we tried three of the activities from the #TeamGirl Challenge Pack. First up was Crocodile River. In this activity, girls are divided into teams and provided with newspaper. Their challenge is to get their whole team across a river full of crocodiles! The only way to get across the river is by stepping on floating logs or stones (the newspaper). Only one person may stand on a log or stone at a time. The logs and stones can be picked up and moved, but not thrown. The instructions said to provide each team with a number of pieces of newspaper equal to 1/3 the size of the group - i.e. 3 squares for 9 people, however, in order for this activity to work, the group needs a minimum of 3 squares regardless of the group size. We had four groups of four so that the activity wouldn't take too long (where girls might get bored).
The second activity was In Balance, where everyone stands in a circle and holds hands. The idea is that they can then lean backwards and the circle will help everyone stay upright. The second part is to have alternate girls lean inwards and outwards, and, again, the circle will help everyone stay upright. I have to label this activity as USE WITH CAUTION. If your girls are different sizes and strengths, they may hurt each other as the strain placed on hands and arms can be too much. It may work better if the girls linked arms rather than holding hands - but we didn't try this.
The final activity was the most popular - Tallest Tower. Each team was provided with straws and tape and given the goal of creating the tallest possible free-standing structure in the allowed time.
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Team Action
To end our program, each group of girls was asked to use the last five minutes in order to come up with a list of ideas of how we could take action on poverty. The ideas were varied and we will use them going forward to complete both the #TeamGirl Challenge and the NSP: Action on Poverty.
The meeting ended with reminders for next week, distributing forms for the Planetarium trip on November 1st, and we closed with Taps.
