Events - Item

Event Dates

Starting: Saturday 23 February 2008
Ending: Saturday 23 February 2008

Report

Over 340 Cygnets, Brigini, Guides, Rangers and Guiders came together on Saturday 23 rd February in Dublin to celebrate World Thinking Day in style. We had representatives from Cork, Newry, Dublin and Ferns. The day opened with a colourful Parade of Nations with everyone parading from the school grounds to the hall displaying flags, costumes etc from the various WAGGGS countries. This was followed by a brief welcome and then every section dispersed to their bases for the day’s activities.

The upstairs of the house was filled with Cygnets who spent the day between 4 fun workshops. In the morning they watched an Australian Shadow Puppet show and were shown how some of the puppets were made, they also made some lovely craft items based on their American/Australian theme. Having had a short break for lunch they listened to stories from around the world and even the Guiders were enthralled by these, they also played some international games and if the sounds being heard downstairs were anything to go by they had great fun.

After the Parade of Nations the Brigini went over to Synge Street School where they divided into their four groups, Elephants, Lions, Monkeys and Tigers. As this year’s theme for this section was based on Africa all the activities were based around that continent.

The girls had four activities:

African Dance - this involved warming up activities, followed by learning an African chant and dancing steps to go with it, in all of which the girls displayed great enthusiasm with varying amounts of skill.

Craft - during this the Brigini were each given a bag containing three crafts to work on, any craft not completed could then be taken home. The crafts consisting of sewing felt hand puppets, elephants, giraffes, monkeys and tigers, colouring in clip-on book marks and face masks, all again with an African animal theme. By the end of each session the Guiders were cross-eyed from threading needles!

Storytelling - this session was based around stories about life in Africa and also taught the girls some gestures used by young African girls and boys to each other. Storytelling always proves very popular with the girls and this year was no exception.

Sounds of Africa - this was a drumming based workshop in which the girls learned drumming beats and dancing steps to accompany them. This proved a very popular and noisy session and a complete contrast to the storytelling!

There were over 100 Guides from 4 Dioceses and they were based in the hall and downstairs rooms and their theme for the day was Europe they spent the day learning about the EU with Rachel Pidgeon from the European Commission who answered the girls' questions about their place in Europe and got their thoughts on creating a European themed interest badge. Members of the Dublin City Morris Dancers taught the girls how to do some English country dancing. Maria Carroll and Anne Marie Smith very kindly ran the crafts workshop during which the girls made little Girl Guide dolls that could be worn as a broach or used as a fridge magnet. Most of the girls made the broaches and wore them proudly for the rest of the day. In the morning, some Polish Scouts gave us all an insight into scouting in Poland and the girls really enjoyed some very different games. In the afternoon Lukas told the girls about life in Sweden. There were lots of questions about which of the Swedish wild animals eat humans from one of the groups!

The Rangers also went to the school where they were transported to India for the day – they learnt to tie Saris, do batik crafts, do Bollywood dancing and even sampled some Indian food – a great forerunner for the proposed Ranger trip to the WAGGGS world Centre in Sangam in July next year. This year 9 girls took part in the Ranger Section Celebrations and really enjoyed the day. At the end of the day everyone returned to the main hall together for a quick Closing Ceremony. Each company / unit was invited to send a member forward to present their contribution to the World Thinking Day Fund. A total of €511 and £60 sterling was collected. Everyone present received the WAGGGS Thinking Day badge and each section also received a special souvenir of the day.

I would like to thank all those who undertook workshops for us and also the team members who put so much work into the preparations and planning of the day.

We received very positive feedback from a lot of the facilitators who said that the girls were a pleasure to work with and they would love to work with them again in the future.

 

Mairead Quinn

International Commissioner