Week 3, 3 August

This evening the girls completed the WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts) Global Action Theme badge about children in the developing world and helping to end poverty in our world.

First of all the girls brainstormed in their sixes what they thought that poverty meant - quite a hard concept to grasp but the girls did well with this.

Then the girls split into 3 different groups to complete the activities.

Activity 1 was a shopping exercise where pictures of food were provided with dollar amounts on them (rice and porridge were cheap while chocolate and muesli bars were expensive). Then the girls were provided with different amounts of money (dried chick peas) - some received 20 peas, some 10 and some 1 pea. They then had to figure out what they wanted from the shop and if they could afford it.

As the girls were pretending to be from a developing country we also got them to think about how they might store their food and if they could use their resources back in the village. The girls got an understanding of what it must be like.

Activity 2 was a board game where the aim was to get from Home to School. There were different challenges along the way including:

- There is no school in your village. Go back to the start.
- Your parents believe in education. Go forward 4 spaces.
-UNICEF has helped build a school in your village. Take another turn.
-You have to work to support your family. Go back 6 spaces.

Activity 3 was a water filter exercise. We filled a big bucket of water with the bark etc from the park so that it was rather dirty. At the other end of the race was a jug with a Chux cloth over the top to filter out all the large bad things. The girls had to fill up their jug the fastest using a cup. The girls soon realised that not everyone has clean drinking water and this helped them to understand what it might be like to have to go to the river and retrieve water too.

At the end of the evening we talked about what they had learned and it seemed like they learned quite a bit about what it means to be less fortunate.

We also welcomed back Katherine who used to help us with Brownies before she left for Canada. She is back in New Zealand for a while and will be helping us at Brownies.