Thursday 24 November

Today we went to a local crèche to run environment-related games and activities with 50 five-year-olds at their Christmas party. We started them off with an action song about how to be more environmentally friendly. Next we had the kids paint a collective picture of how they saw their environment; some drew trees and plants. The delegates put together gift bags which were given to them whilst they had their juice and cake. Overall the kids really enjoyed their visit from world Guiding members and wanted us to go back the following day.

We spent our afternoon doing advocacy training with Bernadette. It was great for us to learn from each other about what was happening in each of our countries, as well as the structure of world Guiding. With the Conference of Youth (COY) fast approaching we started to learn and plan what we would be doing on a day-to-day basis at both COY and COP17.  We learned how to make the best out of the experience for our Guiding organizations back home as well as how to best voice the opinions of our 10 million members worldwide at the conference. COP has a lot of acronyms and complicated policies, so we spent time reviewing the material which we had learned in preparation at home. We also shared energisers from different countries to keep our brain activity to the maximum. At the end of our training sessions we were officially welcomed to the delegation with a presentation of our centenary WAGGGS scarves, Girl Guide solution badges and WAGGGS lanyard. Now we’re looking official and ready for COY tomorrow morning.  

Leah (UK) and Tiffany (South Africa)