Meeting #25: Girls for a Safer Community

Girls for Safer Communities

You in Guiding: Be Involved in Your Community (YiG4)

You and Others: Learn About Safety (YaO4)

As Guiders, we are always about crests/patches in our unit. So when I saw the GGC was giving out free crests to units who completed the Girls for Safer Communities challenge, I was all over it. I put in a request for the crests, with a promise to do the challenge by May. The next thing to do was to find a Pathfinder who had done the training and was willing to lead the program.

None of our Pathfinders were interested, so I contacted our Area Training Advisor, and she found me a Pathfinder from another District who could help us out.

She was an fabulous leader and we were really impressed with her public speaking skills. She started off giving them large pieces of paper and markers, and had them draw maps of the area around our school.

Then they buddied up and got checksheets and we went on a walk in the neighbourhood around the school. We live in a rural suburb, so no sidewalks, no crosswalks, no bike lanes.

After the tour outside, we went back inside and the girls filled out report cards on the neighbourhood and had a discussion about what would make the community safer. I think the item they chose as their issue to talk about was the amount of litter that is around the neighbourhood. She is planning to send the report cards to our city councillor. (YiG4#1, YaO4#4)

For the last half hour, we updated their books on what we've done lately, and then we sang some songs, using the Resources some girls had brought in for their Canadian Guiding badge.