Day one of Young Leaders Weekend.
The journey should take 1 hour 50 mins in the best conditions, however it took us over 2.5 hours due to the engines stopping mid crossing and slightly choppy conditions. Most of us managed fine with the journey, and even managed to get a couple of minutes sleep before being awakened by the jolt of going over a big wave, however Sophie did get a bit sea sick.
When we arrived on Naifaru we were welcomed by the islands Guides (aged 12-16), who presented us with a flower crown and a chocolate muffin each (which was delicious).
Young leaders from two other island also arrived at the same time. Our bags were taken from us and were loaded onto a tuk-tuk type vehicle, which were taken to the school for us while we walked.
We commenced with a breakfast of a tasty fish and rice dish with a bit of crunch, which was native to the island, along with roshi, bananas and black tea (which is really sweet).
Recruitment and Retention
After some short introductions we started our first session on recruitment and retention by discussing the reasons why they are YLs, we used the statement,
I am a YL because...
There were lot of inspiring reasons why these YLs volunteer with Guiding. We then asked them to get into small groups and brainstorm the reasons they believe girls leave Guiding at YL age (16-25).
There were many reasons as to why they would leave, such as heading off to university in a different country, moving island, getting married, having children etc. We then started to discuss some of the comebacks our YLs could use to try and stop girls leaving for these reasons. The session was cut short as we needed to go to somewhere on the island at a certain time.
At 10am sharp it was time to leave to visit the turtle rehabilitation sanctuary on the island. The sanctuary was home to a number of injured turtles who have lost limbs due to getting caught in fishing nets or plastic in the ocean. There were also turtles that were buoyant, and floated on top of the water. They needed to stay in the sanctuary until they are able to dive in the ocean again. It was a huge wake up call to us all. The staff at the sanctuary told us about the work they do in rehabilitating the turtles and a bit about each of the turtles in the sanctuary. Some of the turtles we were introduced to are almost ready to be released back into the sea.
Recruitment and retention continued..
When we returned to the school, we continued with the recruitment and retention session. We got the YL’s sitting in two lines having discussions with the person opposite them, one person argues why they want to leave Guiding and the other person gives reasons to stay! We shared some examples and one of those was ‘I’m getting married and won’t have time for a family and Guiding’ to which Ashi proved that you can do both as she had been married 25 years and had 3 children and still managed to have a part in Guiding and even a part in the MGGA as the Commissioner for youth. There were huge cheers to this and the session ended on a high!
After our second part of the recruitment and retention session we had lunch, which was comprised of ….. which went down well as we are all hungry from our busy morning. We also used this time to get changed into our swim wear, ready for the trip to the beach.
Commitment and Volunteerism
After yet another tasty meal, we started our second session on commitment and volunteerism. In this session we began by looking at their commitment to Guiding and we made promise and law beads. There was 11 beads all different colours and with different means relating to the colour.
Light blue – honour is to be trusted
Yellow - loyal
Light green – useful and helpful to others
Red – a friend to all and a sister to every other guide
Orange - courteous
Light purple – kind to all living things
Bright pink – obeys orders
Dark green – sings and smiles under all difficulties
Light pink - thrifty
Dark purple – pure in thought, word and deed
In this session we were only able to cover the commitment part, through looking at the promise and laws of the MGGA and explaining how similar the UK Guides promise and laws. The session had to be cut short again, as we needed to go to the beach.
We enjoyed doing the two sessions, but we were definitely looking forward to going to the beach, or as they like to call it in the Maldives, Salt. We all thought we would just be walking back to the bit of beach were the Turtle Rehabilitation Centre was, but there were two large flatbed pick-up trucks waiting for us out side. We pilled on, with our bags and resources that we needed to complete our session for the beach Olympics. The pick-ups took us back to the port where we got onto two barge like boats that took us to a different island.
Getting off the boat when we got there was a bit of a mission. Due to the size of the boat we couldn’t get too close to the land, so we had to jump off into to water, which was about waste height, and wade to dry land. We also had to bring with us all the bags, including Lottie’s camera bag (which we now know weighed about 19kg) which was put on Lyndsay’s head and walked to shore. When the second boat arrived we created a train to pass the items off the boat onto the land. We all had a bit of a swim and then a snack of fruit and chilli before starting our Beach Olympics activity.
Beach Olympics
To kick start our beach Olympics we needed to get the Young Leaders into groups. To do this, we gave each of them a card with a picture of an animal on it. They had to pretend to be that animal so that they could find the other members of their team. The Young Leaders found this really funny and were laughing and smiling. They then had to make up a team name. Once they had done this and after some cheering and chanting we began our first game.
We started off by standing in lines and playing over/under with the beach ball. This is where we really started to see the girls competitive side! We played a couple of other games with the beach ball and then started a water challenge relay. The girls had to take it in turns in their teams to run to the sea and fill up a plastic bottle that had holes in. They then had to run back to the start and pour the water into another bottle. Once the water rose high enough the girls could reach a floating peg and take it out. For each challenge the teams were awarded 5,4,3,2 and 1 points depending on where they came. We played a couple of other games with the plastic bottles and then had one last race where they had to pass a cup of water down the line by holding it over their head and tipping it into a cup behind.
At the end of the games, the GOLD leaders totaled up the scores and found out that team Nagin had won. We kept it a secret so that we could reveal it at the closing ceremony. The Young Leaders then ran into the sea and went for a swim. The GOLD leaders joined them and everyone did some snorkeling. It was amazing!
BBQ
For our BBQ with YLs we dressed up in our Maldivian feyli we received as gifts, from the little maids from Huravee in Hulhumalé. Three of us wore the feyli with a black top and three with a white top. As we had been told before we left that the colour theme was black and white. We were ready to embrace the Maldivian culture for the lovely evening ahead.
Once we were ready we headed back to the school, where they told us to go down to the beach. While we were waiting for the BBQ to be ready, we sang songs with the Young leaders, one that they really enjoyed was ‘Down in the Jungle’, we also taught them Edelweiss, as they already knew the clapping actions. When the BBQ was ready ate sausages, chicken potato and rice, which of course was a little spicy.
They also shared with us one of their native songs which was very impressive.
It was an enjoyable evening, and we ended the night just before midnight!
Day 2.
For our second breakfast of the YL weekend we had the traditional rice dish again, with tuna. As usual it was very tasty. Our breakfast that morning was at 7.30am. However, we miss a couple of things on the schedule, we didn’t manage to make the morning wake up whistle at 5am and we also missed out on the 6am exercise and coffee, as we were still in bed.
Keep the Scene Clean
On Saturday morning the first session was with Rayya, the President of the Young Leaders, titled ‘Keep the Scene Clean’. She presented a WAGGGS seminar based on the United Nation’s global sustainable development goals. Rayya educated us on the effect we are having on the planet and how we can try and change things. Would could do this by living more sustainable lives. After going to the island we went to for swimming and beach Olympics we can see the impact that we are making, which made the topic even closer to home.
The activity included being given one of the development goals that linked with the environment. We discussed the importance of it and how we could personally contribute to achieving the goal. She also had examples with her of changes we could make that could have an impact: reusable hessian bags for shopping, reusable bottles for water, reusable fabric covered in beeswax, which can replace cling film and menstrual cups to reduce the plastic waste from sanitary pads and tampon applicators. We were also all given a metal straw to replace the single use plastic straws we use in our drinks. The session left us feeling inspired to make changes of our own to aid the cause. We each thought of something that we are going to do when we return home including: using the beeswax clingfilm for sandwiches, trying the menstrual cups, reducing how many wipes we use, getting reusable cotton buds, shopping in zero waste shops when we can and much, much more.
The quote that came from the session was:
‘We don’t need a few doing it perfectly, we just need everyone doing it imperfectly”
Communication and Delegation
For the second session of the day but our first session we led a session focused on communication and how you can communicate in several ways and how important communication is.
Our first activity in the session was ‘Mirror Charades’ in small groups, ideally teams of six. Where you would have four team members sat in a line: the fifth member stood behind the line of four and acting/miming out an animal, place or object that had been written on a piece of paper (they are not allowed to talk). The sixth member of the team was then stood in front of the four and the sixth person had to copy the actions of the person standing behind the row. The four people sat down, then had to guess what the item was by looking at the signs being used by the person in front of them, which they were mirroring from the individual behind the row.
Once the item on the paper has been guessed, the person who guessed it correctly then gets to the move and stand at the front, the person that was at the front gets to move to the back, and the one at the back gets to move into the empty seat. They then get to repeat this until everyone has had a go at, at least one side of the row, or all the slips of paper have been used.
This game showed the YL’s that by using their eyes and body positions, they can work well as a team to accomplish a goal. The YL’s can share this game within their local units, to develop the use of non-verbal communication.
In addition to this, they took part in an activity called ‘Picture This’ where one member of each group was given a drawing of an item, for example; a snowman, a car or a house and they had to describe what the drawing contained without saying the name of the item and the rest of the team had to draw on paper what they thought the item looked like. By describing the details in the picture, meant that members of each team had to listen carefully and use their cognitive thinking.
Our final activity in this session was a Lego relay. We gave each team a bag of identical pieces of Lego, and the aim of this game was to create a matching structure to the model that we had already completed.
We placed that model at the front of the room and placed a large box in front so that the teams that were sitting closer could not see the model. When we said go the teams were able to come up to the front one at a time and look at the structure. They then went back to the team to start building their model. We had informed them that they should only place one brick at a time, but somewhere this got lost in communication, as they were putting more than one down at a time. If they thought they had finished and had used all of the Lego pieces one of our team would take their model and double check it against the original. Most of the time the teams had not got all the bricks in the right place, so we would take it back to them and tell them to look again and try to solve the problem.
Fundraising
As part of the YL weekend they had asked us to run a session about the fundraising activities we had done to raise money for our GOLD project and give advice about how to run a fundraising event.
We didn’t have much of a plan for this session. But we were able to download parts of the Fundraising Toolkit from the Girl Guiding UK (GGUK) website so we could put together a structure for the session. Throughout all of the sessions we kept chopping and changing our minds on what was going into each session and evaluating as we went along.
As fundraising can be quite a difficult topic to cover we wanted make it more interactive instead of a short lecture. We wanted the groups to have plenty of opportunities to discuss ideas and potentially have a plan to take away with them at the end, so they could begin to prepare a fundraising event.
We started out with a short group discussion about why you would fundraise and what opportunities it could give to members of Guiding in the Maldives. During the trip we found out that fundraising is quite important to MGGA as they do not charge any fees to their members, and their funding comes mainly from the sale of their uniform and additional events. We pointed out to them that more money coming into MGGA means that more girls could get involved with the movement and they could do more exciting things as an organisation. One Young Leader mentioned being able to travel internationally, which they all seemed very keen about!
After their discussions we got them to write down some of the things they already did to fundraise and picked out a few to read out – there were so many great ideas in the room. Lottie then introduced them to the A-Z of Fundraising produced by GGUK to give them an idea of something different they could do – a Zumbathon seemed to catch the imagination of a few in the room. She then got them to write ideas of what they would like to do to fundraise.
After a brief introduction about how events could be so beneficial and could raise quite a lot of money, and a quick outline of the process of setting an event up, Lottie called on Sophie and Adeola to talk about their experiences of running events.
Sophie ran a very successful quiz night as part of her GOLD fundraising, and she spoke about how she had different people running different parts of it, highlighting the importance of delegation for an event. She also informed the YLs that she had asked for a lot of donations – for example, the Ploughman’s supper included in the ticket price was completely donated, as were raffle prizes.
As many of our events incorporate smaller stalls such as raffles and tombolas, or include alcohol, for example wine tasting evenings, it was a small challenge to adapt some of these traditional British fundraising staples, as gambling and alcohol are forbidden under Islamic teachings.
Adeola then spoke about fundraising she did as part of her church, particularly focusing on raising money through bag packing and bucket collections at supermarkets during the Christmas season. She said that this was because people were more generous in the festive period, so it’s worth considering times of the year when people are more likely to give money to charity as part of planning for the event.
Once they had listened to these two case studies, the YL’s started to plan their own events, choosing one from the lists they had made and thinking about the different components of it. It was particularly interesting to hear about a festival planned by one group and let them know that annual events work so much better than one-off events, once they are established people are more likely to come time and time again.
After about fifteen minutes of planning, we got a couple of groups to feedback what they had they planned to the rest of the group, which included the festival in more detail. We are all looking forward to seeing whether the international festival happens! We will be following the MGGA on social media to keep up to date on the process of their events, and we can’t wait to see what they plan in the future!
Closing Ceremony
To complete our wonderful YL weekend we took part in the closing ceremony. All the Young Leaders were presented with a certificate signed by Ashi, commissioner of youth and Alyson, GOLD team leader. Alyson was taken away earlier in the day to sign all 50+ of the certificates! We were presented with gifts of thanks along with all those who helped run the weekend.
There is a huge amount of planning and preparation that goes into these events! We want to say a huge thanks to everyone who took part in the YL weekend! We ran some great sessions with these inspiring women and had some amazing experiences too.
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