Marupe Brownies and Unit 66

Post by Katie

Mary Poppins would be proud of us, as on Wednesday we got round to some flat-cleaning, washing clothes and stocking up our fridge and cupboards. We also planned for our first Brownie meeting, which was held in a school in Marupe, only a short bus ride from Riga.

We held an international themed evening for the girls, their Leader and a couple of Young Leaders, to help them learn about the World Association of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting and the fact that Guiding happens all around the world. 

We first played 'Name someone and throw them a ball' but this time with our inflatable globes, and then an international version of 'Connect' (My name is.... and I want to visit....a country) to link us all together. We then went outside to play corners, where the girls had to run and choose a corner, and then sit out if their corner was called. We made each corner into a World Centre, and were also able to include the 5th World Centre, newly named as Kusafiri, which roams around Africa.

Finally, we played the WAGGGS world badge beetle drive, complete with a die made by Net. (Mum, I used maths!-Net) The girls really enjoyed drawing the badge and learning what the different parts of the badge mean.

On Thursday we travelled by tram to the outskirts of Riga, where Unit 66 meets in a Youth Centre. We met the Guides and Scouts and started off with a different name game, where you have to say someone's name before the person in the middle of the circle slaps your hand. Next we played True or False? for facts about the World Organisation of the Scout Movement (WOSM) and WAGGGS. For the main activity, we asked the Guides and Scouts to plan a 2 night trip away, thinking about budget, the aim of the trip and the logistics of going away. We shared our experiences of preparing for trips such as our GOLD trip, and were happy to hear them say it had been useful afterwards. To finish, we played stomp, where everyone takes one step at a time, all at the same time and tries to stand on someone else's foot. There was much laughter and some competitiveness (including from myself). 

Tomorrow is a day off before Saturday, when we will be getting up very early for a day's training in Valmeira.

By the Baltic seaside

Post by Katie

After our hectic but fun Saturday, Sunday and Monday were more relaxed. We explored the centre of Riga, met the Chief Guide Agnija to discuss what would be happening on the rest of our GOLD project and also met up with Liga to help her plan a future overnight hike for Rovers and Rangers, with activities to help them get to know each other and get them interested in coming to future meetings.

We also had the chance to go to an ice hockey match, which was great fun and a must if you're ever in Riga.

Sarah K helping one of the tiny cubs! 

On Tuesday we took the train to Jurmala, a popular historic resort town and also the home of the Jurmala Sea Cubs and Brownies. We played some getting to know you games, Chaos tag where everyone is on, Make me a...shape out of yourselves and some relay games. It was great to talk to the kids and we will be going back there to run more activities next Tuesday.

On the non-project side, Laura and Sarah K have been in the Baltic sea and out for a run. The rest of us are more sensible!

At the beach

We've arrived!

Post by Katie

We're in Latvia! After going to INTOPS 13 months ago, finding out we'd been selected for Latvia 10 months ago and all the planning, our project has begun.

And in true GOLD style, it's been a whirlwind so far.

We successfully made it to Riga and up the 3 flights of stairs to our flat late Thursday night. We stocked up on food the next morning and had a wander through the Old Town of Riga before meeting up with Liga to talk about GOLD in Latvia.

We helped Liga to plan her first meetings of the year, one for each age range, for the next day, and 1 hour before the train was due to leave, decided to travel to Ogre, where the meeting was, so that we were there ready for the morning. Cue some quick packing and travelling to the train station, but we made it.

Saturday was spent at Liga's unit. We ran games for Brownies and Cubs to get them excited about Guiding and Scouting, and for the Guides and Scouts we ran activities to make them think about how they treat others both at their meetings and outside of them.

Finally we ran a Look Wider taster session for the Rovers and Rangers to demonstrate what we'd do at a Senior Section meeting in the UK. We first covered Leadership where the Rovers and Rangers had to lead an activity; they came up with teaching us a traditional Latvian folk song by making us listen and write down what we heard phonetically. We next did the Fit for Life Octane, for which we played Newspaper Hockey, and finally International, which involved talking about what you'd pack in a rucksack to travel with. 

And did I mention that this all took place at the Latvian Scout and Guide museum? There were exhibits from the very start of the organisations and the museum also covered the Soviet Union occupation, when Scouting and Guiding were banned and those Latvian Scouts and Guides that had managed to escape were scattered across the globe; impressively they continued Latvian Scouting and Guiding, for example there's a Latvian unit in Nottingham.

So now we're back in Riga, ready to recharge and prepare for our next adventure!

GOLD Team Roles

Blog post by everyone!

Net - Leader

My role is pretty simple - to make sure everything is done right! This means supporting the rest of the team in their roles, writing risk assessments, sorting out accommodation, liaising with both the LSGCO and Girlguiding here in the UK and generally keeping on top of everything. I've probably done some other stuff too but it's been a bit of a blur! It's a big job, but I'm enjoying the challenge! 

Sarah S – First Aid

My main role as First Aider is providing first aid (whilst making sure that anyone else involved is safe and that the situation doesn’t become worse) and pastoral support overseas on project for GOLD Team Latvia.  At second briefing we had individual role training and Toni from Team Latvia 2014 ran the First Aid training, demonstrating effective wound cleaning and explaining the signs and symptoms of temperature related conditions.  Hopefully, I won’t have to use my training whilst out on project and everyone says safe and well!  

Laura – Resource co-ordinator

The training and resources co-ordinator role involves ensuring we have all the resources we need to run our training sessions whilst on project. This includes co-ordinating and sourcing what we need to bring with us from the UK and what we will likely be able to buy in country to save money and weight in luggage.

Sarah K - Treasurer

While the rest of the team were off at their individual role trainings, Net and I went to the treasurer training.  I’m in charge of the money and making sure we stick to our budget in Latvia….apparently I’m the responsible one…..  At the treasurer training we ran through a mock budget and went through how to use all the different spreadsheets.  I’ve basically got to make sure that we have a budget worked out before we leave the UK, and keep track of everything while in Latvia.  Therefore I’ll be collecting and numbering receipts, be in charge of the team bank account and make sure that the books add up after we get back!  I’ll be constantly armed with a mini calculator, conversion chart and my treasurer notebook J I’d better get started practicing some mental arithmetic!            

Katie – Photo & Video Co-ordinator

I’m responsible for making sure we’re taking photos of our work throughout the project, making sure we've got the photos we need for social media, and taking photos & video that follow Girlguiding guidelines. After the project, it’s my job to select our best 50 photos and send these to Girlguiding. I know that’s going to be hard, as there’ll be so many moments I’ll want to select (And, in the age of digital cameras, we take a lot of photos. I took hundreds on my last trip, so times that by 5 and that’s a lot of photos to go through! )

My training involved sorting through previous GOLD photos to determine what were good and bad qualities in the photos, and discussing our handy how-to booklet with Girlguiding’s PR team.

Written Documenter (written by Katie)

As there’s only 5 of us, this role will be shared between all of us, with a co-ordinator for each social media role. For example, for this post we each wrote about our own roles. We’ll share things such as writing minutes from our team conference calls, and the reports about our trip.

Sarah S is our twitter queen (follow us @GOLDLatvia_2015), our Facebook page is in Sarah K’s capable hands and I (Katie) am the blog co-ordinator. 

4th (and last!) Briefing Weekend, 4th - 6th September

Blog post by Katie

Our 4^th Briefing weekend took place up on the North Welsh coast in my county Clwyd, at the Rhyl Guide Headquarters. Once everyone had arrived, including our spare pigeon from 3^rd Briefing, we were presented with mysterious presents by Net and told to open them at the same time; it turned out these were our uniforms! We’re now kitted out in matching polos, rugby shirts & hoodies, and we look very smart even if I do say so myself.

Sarah in our lovely Latvian-red hoodie. And a pigeon (spot the developing theme...)

On Saturday morning, after a traditional camp breakfast of eggy bread, we knuckled down to setting an agenda for the weekend and doing some planning for when we’re out in Latvia. One of the lists we're making is songs, ice breakers and general games we can play with the leaders and kids. If you know any songs or games, let us know in the comments below.

Rhyl Guide Headquarters is only 5 minutes walk from the beach, so in the afternoon we headed down for a stroll and to get some team photos wearing our uniform.

Synchronised jumping in all our varieties of uniform.

These rugby shirts will keep us warm in the chilly October weather.

Our alternate life as a band. Album due out soon....

On the Sunday we were able to decamp to Sue’s house due to needing to be out of the headquarters (thank you Sue!) where we took over the dining room for the last few hours of planning and discussing before we went our separate ways.

It’s strange to think that in 13 days we will be coming together the night before our project starts, but we can’t wait to get to Riga and start meeting the Scouts and Guides we’re going to be working with.

Roll on Latvia!

Did everyone remember their spare pigeon..?! Third briefing weekend 24-26th July

Blog post by Sarah K

Third briefing began on a VERY wet Friday at the end of July. We all travelled up (or across) to PGL Caythorpe, which for most of us took much longer than planned due to rain, traffic etc – generally your typical English summer day!  Sarah S was being dropped off in Grantham a little later in the evening than the rest of us, so we went on a road trip in Katie’s car to pick her up!  Katie doesn’t have the biggest car and had never driven it with so many people in it, so squashing us all in was quite amusing – I’m not sure she’ll volunteer to drive next time!  We turned up in ASDA car park in typical Team Latvia style…with a picture of a pigeon attached to a pole to help Sarah find us (for those of you not in on the joke, Anna (GOLD co-ordinator) suggested to the leaders that they could communicate via carrier pigeon….we took this very literally and managed to send her one at the World Scout Jamboree!!).

Anna with the 'pigeon' we sent her at the World Scout Jamboree in Japan!

Once back at PGL, we set about our first very important task for the weekend – celebrating Net’s birthday! We got her a variety of silly presents, including a bubble gun/fan (very handy for Latvia!) and of course ate some cake (made by Sarah K).  This was a bit of a late night with everyone so full of sugar so we sat up chatting and catching up ready to get to work in the morning.

Presents, cakes & pigeons

Saturday started on a slightly sad note.  Unfortunately Ellen has decided that she is unable to continue with the project and come to Latvia, due to personal commitments.  We are going to miss her very much, but wish her all the best!!  That leaves us as a team of five moving forwards, and so we set about discussing the rest of the project and how to work as a five.

Net had created a list of 18 things we needed to discuss over the weekend – not much really!! We began by doing the easy bit….writing the kit list.  An hour later we had filled a massive white board with all sorts of things we need to remember.  We were excited to receive an email from the Chief Guide in Latvia telling us more about the project, and began to discuss what we need to plan.  A lot of our work is going to be with the Rangers and Rovers so we looked at what resources were available in the UK already and made a list of things we need to collect.  We are also going to be doing a whole international based training day….more info on this will come from 4^th briefing!  We also discussed ways of reviewing things on project, including having a worry box and a memory box, and debated what gifts to get our hosts.

Creating the kit list

Laura's excited!!

After lunch we decided it was time for some team building so Net took us up on the high ropes course.  Sarah, Sarah and Katie took a bit of convincing to do it, but Laura thought it was great.  Needless to say we all made it round – Laura and Sarah K even had another go!  After we had all recovered from the adrenaline rush we got back to doing more planning and had almost finished our to do list by the end of the day.  After dinner we headed down the road to the local pub for a drink, where we sat at a table next to a parrot not in a cage (much to Sarah K’s horror!), and Laura tried to teach us a new version of I-spy.  This took us a loooooonnnngggg time to figure out, and I for one am still slightly confused, hopefully I’ll understand by the end of project!  We spent most of the evening relaxing, eating more cake and getting very competitive over Uno and Dobble.

We survived!!

Sunday was Katie’s birthday! We had more presents, more cake, and more planning time!  We discussed how we all deal with different emotions (a hug seems appropriate in most situations!) as well as discussed when our next teleconference will be.  We finished off the morning by taking a few pictures before having lunch and played a few more games of Dobble and ninjas before loading into cars and going our separate ways ready for 4^th briefing in just less than 6 weeks time!

Katie's birthday cake

GOLD love

Sarah K and Team Latvia xx

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