World Thinking Day Candle Ceremony for 2023

It’s February, which means in a few weeks we will be celebrating World Thinking Day. Seven years ago, I used some resources I found online to put together a World Thinking Day candle ceremony for the Guide and Senior Section units I was leading. Over the years, it has remained a post people have continued to return to. I thought I would update it slightly in case anyone is looking for it to use in 2023.

This year’s theme is Our World, Our Peaceful Future. Activity packs to use with your unit can be downloaded from the WAGGGS website.

For 97 years, on 22nd February, the birthday of our founder and first World Chief Guide we have observed Thinking Day, where we celebrate international friendship with our sisters in Guiding all around the world.

These candles symbolise what unites us as the World Guiding family and help us to remember our sisters around the globe.

BLUE: We light this candle to represent the sky and sun that shines over people all around the world. We share the same sky and sun whether we are richer or poorer, taller or smaller, older or younger, worship different Gods or no god, come from different countries and have different abilities.

RED: We light this candle to remember our founder, Robert Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes Baden-Powell who helped found the Girl Guides and his wife Olave Baden-Powell, our first World Chief Guide. Together they showed young girls and women the way of Guiding and Scouting to ‘Be Prepared’ and do a good turn every day.

GOLD: We light this candle to represent the Promise and Law that we all pledged to keep with the hope that it will become a way of life for all who make that promise.

WHITE: We light this candle in the hope of peace in every country and territory around the world. We remember our sisters who have been affected by war.

PURPLE: We light this candle to remind ourselves to always stay true to our beliefs even when it is not easy.

GREEN: We light this candle to represent our readiness to serve, and to help other people as expressed in the Guide and Scout motto to always “Be Prepared”.

PINK: We light this candle in honour of friendship, remembering our sister Guides and Girl Scouts wherever they may be – in homes, churches, meeting halls, refugee camps, hospitals and shelters.

We will now each light our own candle from the candle of friendship. Each of these candles is a symbol of the Guiding light of friendship and peace we carry wherever we go in our local community and around the world.

Guide with Pride

Having now officially joined the Volunteer Support Team for Girlguiding Aberdeen & Shetland, I wanted to take some opportunities to meet other volunteers and young members in real life before summer. The first chance to do that was by joining members to represent Girlguiding Aberdeen at the Grampian Pride Parade at the end of May.

As an LGBTQIA+ member of Girlguiding, I’ve always wanted to be able to attend a Pride event but the events in Edinburgh and Glasgow always fell on weekends I was working or away. And obviously for the last 2 years there’s been no Pride events.

I was totally welcomed by two leaders of a Guide & Ranger unit who had organised for our county group to be part of the parade, and also got to meet several other LGBTQIA+ volunteers and girls who had come along to join too. One of the Guides even sorted my lack of face paint so I was fully ‘Rainbow-ed”. Of course, Olave Bearen-Powell was excited to come along, and as per usual attracted attention of kids who had come to watch and somebody who was photographing the event.

Several of the girls I’ve had through my units and supported in Senior Section (before it was divided up into different things) identify as queer, some are still working things out. As an adult who spent their entire schooling under section 28 (which definitely seeped into Girlguiding – I still remember leaders who we all knew were couples having to sort of keep that from others even though none of us cared. The only thing we found weird was it being a very obvious secret that none of the adults talked about), I kind of did the same thing myself. None of the girls I led in Edinburgh ever knew, partly because I’ve been single the whole time I’ve been volunteering so it just never came up and I just let everyone assume I was straight. Plus I have my faith beliefs and I know that many of my friends who identify as Christians would have issues with it too.

The pandemic, plus some of the young people I have worked with not just in Girlguiding but through other organisations who are now adults having found me in other contexts and coming out to me, plus other adults coming out to me and parents of LGBTQIA+ sharing some of their stories made me realise that it would have really helped if they’d seen more representation around them.

It was emotional, as I walked with another leader my age, and they talked to me about how section 28 had negatively affected them too. It was also wonderful to see friends of the Guides and Rangers who had chosen to walk at Pride seeking our group out and walking with us for part of it. A few of them just started chatting to me (having never met me before!) showing me the items they had carefully saved up for to buy and wear for Pride Month. It made me feel so proud that their generation felt confident to be their authentic selves so publically. It was truly a joy filled day!

I saw on instagram spectators had picked up on Girlguiding being there, and one person even found my instagram recognised me (well, probably Olave the bear!) and took time to say what it had meant to them as a former Guide from the section 28 era to see us there.

I hope that in 2023 there’ll be an even larger group of us taking part, and I’m grateful to my friends who were walking with the University of Aberdeen for giving me a lift back to my car afterwards. I’ve been struggling with a bit of an M.E. relapse since last November, so my ability to do events like this is thwarted a fair bit just now which is very frustrating.

All in all, Olave and I had a blast and we are looking forward to visiting one of the units we met and helping out when we can before my next UCLA extension class starts up in late July for 6 weeks.

What just happened?

Anyone still here? I know it’s been a while!

I last wrote just after myself, and 2 others from our county’s 14-30 programme team returned from a wonderful weekend running training for our county’s Young Leaders working on their Young Leadership Qualifications.

What happened after that?

Well, first work got very full on (which had already been the case at the start of that September, but got doubly so at the beginning of October) combined with my friends who had lived in my flat in Aberdeen for several years buying their first home. I had always agreed not to sell my flat so they could live in it until they saved enough for the deposit on their first place which ended up happening more quickly than they thought.

My initial plan was to move to Aberdeen temporarily in January 2020 and live there so I could more easily use weekends and evenings to get the flat ready to sell and be there for viewing appointments in the spring. I’d been in Aberdeen about a week before I was back on the road to Edinburgh after getting a call that my Mum was to have brain surgery. There were a lot of things like that we had to deal with and we had planned on taking some things up with the NHS board, however a few weeks later I returned from a work trip to London and spoke to a close friend in Italy whose sister had just flown into the UK and been appalled to find not even so much as basic checks or information about need to quarantine at airport, and realised that our UK Government had truly screwed up. I went onto the WHO website, dusted off my Health Science degree and read as many articles and looked at data coming out. I surmised that likely COVID had already spread so far into the UK population that there would be too many people to test, track and trace. We needed to be in lockdown otherwise there would soon be not enough adult ICU beds and trained staff to deal with the crisis. People thought I was being ridiculous. Knowing I’d been in London and could easily have caught it, I drove to Aberdeen on March 7 putting myself into isolation and told my Mum she was not to use public transport. I was terrified of her getting it as she was still recovering from her surgery. I was vaguely aware on that drive that I was likely not going to see anyone for at least a month as I knew lockdown was going to be inevitable. The question was, how bad would they let things spread before they finally followed the guidelines they had been asked to put into action by the WHO? (Answer: very bad).

A couple of weeks later, my friend got diagnosed with cancer and we finally went into lockdown.

After Easter holidays, we ran Guides on zoom (me in Aberdeen, Jo in Edinburgh, and other leaders joining us different weeks). My friend died the weekend that the news broke of a certain person’s trip to Barnard Castle.

With the other leaders after hosting a ‘Qually’ on zoom for the final night of Guides in summer 2020. Lots of the girls were in P7 and had missed out on their P7 camp, leavers ceremonies and ‘Qually’ (which is a traditional similar to a prom for primary school leavers).

We planned to continue Guides on Zoom after the summer, but both myself and Jo just didn’t have the capacity. Both of us had jobs that had got busier and more distressing due to the pandemic. There were more deaths, more sickness, more tough family stuff. It became very clear that the housing market in Aberdeen was suffering a continued crash while in Edinburgh the housing market was going crazy too, and that meant my move to Aberdeen was no longer temporary.

In spring 2021 as in-person meetings returned, I made the decision to resign as Young Leader Advisor at our Division in Edinburgh and told Jo to take me off the list as Unit Leader. But like the last time I moved from Edinburgh to Aberdeen it has taken a lot of nudging, e-mailing to get hold of people to be able to find a place to volunteer. (And the fact that it was so difficult is a huge factor in why we lose young adult volunteers, I gave up for a good few months because I didn’t have the energy to chase up).

I also applied and got accepted to do a Creative Writing course through UCLA’s extension school, as writing became a way to deal with a lot of grief and anger.

I am gradually getting back into the swing of Girlguiding again. I now have a new role on the county’s volunteer support team as the Peer Education and YLQ lead. I hope to be able to help leaders and young volunteers make the best of opportunities to develop their youth work and leadership skills and continue campaigning for us to better integrate with award schemes in Scotland that are not run by Girlguiding.

We shall see how it goes.

And as always, Olave will be coming along for the ride wherever possible.

Yes, Olave Bearen-Powell wears a mask.

Camp bedtime stories…

So I haven’t had a chance to upload photos I took from the recent Young Leaders training residential I went on with our County 14-30 Adviser. More to come on that soon!

However, if you follow me on instagram you may have seen this pic which I posted after the girls pointed it out what they’d put on their charter for the weekend (essentially rules they’d set for the group while at camp).

For the last few years, I’ve been involved in running a week long surf camp holiday for teens with Scripture Union Scotland. As a person who is not one of the cooks (who have to be up to get the porridge on!), often the disciplinarian and the camp ‘medical officer’ (which basically means Camp First Aider!) I’m usually the female leader on corridor patrol ready to use my ‘Stern Guider’ voice if needed. We are very lucky we’ve had a number of campers return over and over again so actually the last two years they’ve been pretty good at going to sleep. They’ve learned that I’m actually correct when I tell them that if they don’t get sleep, they will feel hideous by halfway through the week. Surfing takes a lot of strength and energy! And they’ve also learned when to recognise the ‘look’ when they know not to try and cross the line any further.

However, a number of years ago we had quite a few leaders kids who were preschool age, and the campers began listening in when they were getting read stories. Which led to a bedtime story each night.

We forgot about it for a while, until one of my fellow leaders suggested bringing this back as an official thing every night just before bedtime.

And so a number of leaders brought a favourite bedtime story to read.

Ok.

I brought about 10.

It was an amazing success as every night after the story, the campers went to get ready for bed without the usual chaos as they were calmer. Gone were the usual issues of leaders getting more and more frustrated about chasing people to get teeth brushed and into dorms before lights out! The only night it didn’t happen was the one night we didn’t do a bedtime story because they’d watched a film and it had finished really late so we decided not to do the bedtime story that night – MISTAKE!

It had worked so well, I wanted to bring that little piece of surf camp to Girlguiding camp! My fellow leaders were really happy for me to ask to the girls if they’d like this at the YL weekend, and they said yes. I’d brought a selection of books with me and let them choose. I actually ended up doing 2 each night.

The nostaglia it brought for the girls, as well as them having a giggle at my attempt at character accents was really lovely. Also, like at surf camp, it brought a sense of calm to the end of the day before lights out. I had planned on doing it in the main hall area, but the girls all being in one dorm asked if I’d come and read it to them when they were all ready for bed.

I share this, because of the age group of these campers in both cases. Over half of the surf camp campers were over 16 this year. All the young leaders were aged 14-17.

An age were most people would likely say “They’re too old for picturebooks and bedtime stories” or “They won’t be interested”

One book they asked me to read on the first night was The Bear and the Piano. It’s a simple story with not a huge amount of words. As I turned the pages and showed them the pictures, one camper began to get emotional. I don’t blame her – I know a number of my friends have got emotional reading it to their kids at bedtime!

The next morning, another camper said something along the lines of “You know there’s more wisdom in those books that are meant to be for kids than most of the stuff we have to read for school“.

I couldn’t agree more.

You may already do this at camps, or perhaps you’d never thought about doing it with Guides or Rangers. However here are some of the stories that I’ve found are universally liked (and in some cases passionately loved!)

The Bear and the Piano

The Book with No Pictures

The Day the Crayons Quit

Peace at Last

Five Minutes Peace

Dogger

Paddington (great if you’ve got a week long camp – read a bit each night!)

Oh the Places You’ll Go

The Bear Snores On

The Very Hungry Caterpillar*

It’s a Book

The Gruffalo’s Child

Any Maisie the Cat book (especially if you’re familiar with Edinburgh!)

*I was suitably chastised by Young leaders for not having brought a copy of this book to the Young Leaders weekend

Do you do bedtime stories at your camps and sleepovers? What are your favourites? Feel free to share in the comments…

It’s volunteers week again…

…and I’m being asked…why do you volunteer?

I’ll be honest, this past year I’ve asked myself quite a few times if I really want to keep doing it. I know I’m not alone in that. I haven’t posted much on this blog as work has at times been all consuming of my energy. I don’t just volunteer with Girlguiding either and to be honest it’s become less fun as I’ve watched changes to our school curriculum and the Girlguiding programme mean the girls seem to be less committed and interested in the things on offer.

Around New Year, me and a fellow leader stood on the street as we finally confessed to each other how close we were to quitting. Tears prickled admitting that, because we love being part of Girlguiding!

I had to have a serious think about whether to continue this year, but ultimately two girls flying through their Baden-Powell, a friend’s daughter appearing in a Girlguiding video with her fellow BP Guides and telling me how she was staying on to become a Ranger even though most other Guides were leaving Girlguiding after getting their Baden-Powell and one of my former Guides telling me how what she learned during her time as a Ranger has set her on the path she’s now on as a young adult…it put new fire in my belly.

Because this is only a snapshot…for all these pictures, there’s probably around 100+ girls who I’ve taught how to build a campfire, helped toast a marshmallow, glared at pointedly when I’ve been standing with an arm raised for silence, climbed walls with, held hands as they learned to skate on an outdoor ice rink, had stand in front of me making their promise by candlelight, stood alongside silently as we remembered in the freezing November cold, talked with, listened to, giggled with, bellowed across a room at, thrown coloured cornflour over, encouraged, given pep talks, snapped pictures for memories for them to put into scrapbooks and albums and allowed to pour ice cold water over my head for charity…

…and more!

It is for the girls that have yet to come and because of the young women who message me or I randomly bump into on a bus and ask me how the current bunch of Guides and Rangers are doing, then tell me about their favourite memory from Girlguiding. The ones I see still continuing on friendships years after they leave. The ones who come back and say ‘Would I be allowed to come back as a volunteer?’

For I was one of those girls once, and was lucky to have leaders who gave up time and energy to help me become the woman I am today. I was the girl who once asked ‘Can I come back and help?’ going from the person earning badges to becoming to one awarding them to another generation.

So here’s to more memories…and more volunteers to come and help share the load!

Riding the starflyer at the Christmas Market

Celebrating Chief Guide Award achievers!

Letting them pour buckets of ice and water over the Adult Leaders for the MND ice bucket challenge.

Doing a Sponsored Spacehop to raise funds for Girlguiding & Dame Kelly Holmes Trust as part of Ready, Steady, Glasgow.

Minion Mayhem with our rapidly expanding Guide unit…

At Edinburgh College photography studio shooting the Free Being Me portraits

Helping out at local summer fair to fundraise for our Division.

The end of our second photography session (when the photographer & I were both ill!)

Learning about Diwali – each one of us found out something about Diwali and brought something along to celebrate it! This – making lanterns!

After doing Color Me Rad 5k with members of Senior Section and their family/friends to raise money for local youth centre rebuild

Glamourama Go For It – this is a popular activity I think just about all of our patrols have chosen now!

Laying the Girlguiding poppy wreath at the local cenotaph.

Some of the girls did the Healthy Eating GFI. You wouldn’t believe the palava of making a fruit salad! 🙂

Discovering archives in our church hall!

Summer holiday leaders’ planning meeting…

Learning how to hula hoop

A Colourful Senior Section makes it into Girlguiding magazine

International Women’s Day – girls brought magazines to make collages about inspirational women…

End of year campfire with some other Senior Section members.