2nd Briefing Weekend

Blog post by Katie

The Charade Ghost

2 months after our 1^st Briefing, with chatting and planning in between, team Latvia reunited at Scout

Park in London. The first evening involved catching up with everyone, a side excursion to buy a tin opener and 100 bread rolls, and Guiding charades with a twist, where a member of each team had to communicate the word whilst inside a bed sheet!

Saturday was jam packed with team activities and training sessions. We started with our team activities which had to tell the other teams something about our country or our project aims, and we had to plan it without our leader’s involvement. Team Latvia came up with a code breakers game set in the Latvia forest. Each team had to decode a message in Morse code to find out which tree had their flag puzzle (each Latvian team member was a tree; for example I was a Maple tree and Net was a ‘Qualti’tree, so had Quality Street sweets stuck on her). It was then a race to see who could put their flag back together correctly first. We picked this activity because during the occupation of the Soviet Union when Guiding and Scouting was banned, groups met in secret in the woods. A few of the other teams’ activities included a Guinea Pig festival from Team Peru and Dragons Den from Team Malawi where we had to pitch one of the 5 Essentials of Guiding.

The Trees of Latvia (Qualitree, Palm, Maple, Redwood, Beech & Oak)

We learnt about facilitating sessions and how to deal with different types of participants in the afternoon, and then we split up to have a training session about our specific team role. This year, the roles in the GOLD team have changed slightly. My role, the Photo & Video Coordinator, is new. You can read a bit more about our roles in an upcoming blog post.

Team Rwanda's creation is judged by 'Paul' and 'Mary'

Challenged to write the promise using dry spaghetti 

Our evening entertainment was TV-themed activities, which led to much fun and a lot of great costumes. I and Sarah are quite keen bakers, so we selected the Great British Bake Off. Each team had to make an object which represented their country out of marshmallow rice krispie mix and icing. Other teams ran games such as relay races, and the Poddington Peas put in an appearance as well.

Sunday brought on more training; we first had a choice between Translation training and Recruitment & Retention training. Most Latvians can speak excellent English, and for the youngest kids who might still be learning English, the adult leaders can help them out, so we as a team went to Recruitment & Retention. 

Playing 'Guess the WAGGGS resource'

Our final activity was a session about the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). For many of the teams, one of the main aims is to promote international Guiding, so this activity was really useful in teaching us more about WAGGGS and learning about the resources, such as activity packs & board games that we can take with us.

And with that, all that was left was the traditional camp lunch of leftovers (I can report that naan bread and peach yoghurt go very well together) before saying our goodbyes and walking to the station. This was the very last time that all the GOLDies of 2015 would be together, as we all have our future briefing weekends separately, then the summer teams have a debrief together, and the winter teams (plus Malawi) have their debrief together. On a happier note, team Latvia has two more briefing weekends to look forward to, as we don’t go on project until October! 

Team Latvia at the 2nd Briefing Weekend