GOLD Guyana 2012

Hello and welcome to our blog! We are a group of 6 Girlguiding UK members aged between 19 and 27, who have been selected to take part in a GOLD project this summer.
GOLD stands for Guiding Overseas Linked with Development, a project run by Girlguiding UK which gives young women aged between 18 and 30 the chance to assist in community action projects in other countries. As well as making a positive impact on the community, we also hope to grow the Guiding Association in the country so that they can participate more fully in WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts). There are 8 projects this year, including our destination Guyana.
We're all very excited for our GOLD journey to begin, and we hope you enjoy reading about how we are preparing and what we are doing when we get there!

Thursday 29 March 2012

The Great Guyana Boat Race!


On Saturday 24th March I held a boat race to help raise funds for our trip to Guyana.
My assistant leader Susanne was the one to suggest it as she had seen and idea in a resource about making paper boats and sailing them as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations as the Queen is having a flotilla of 1000 boats on the Thames. Making and selling 1000 paper boats was a bit ambitious, but I started folding! I found a good instruction video on Youtube and bought some bright paper. I then printed numbers on the sails that would make the winner easy to identify and had a corresponding spread sheet where people could sign up and buy a boat for £1.00. The owner of the first boat over the finishing line would win £100.00.
In the end I sold just over 420 boats. The race took place at Netherurd House, the Scottish training and activity centre in Peebles-shire. I chose a day when people from my county would be attending a training weekend so that I would have their support.
I couldn’t have picked a better day to do it as the sun was shining! Just as well, as the water was still freeing. Some parts of the stream were too deep for wellies, so I had to wear crocs and bear the cold!
With he help of a net (constructed by my brother Graham), two willing guides and a big stick, the boats were launched. Unfortunately  the water was very low because of the good weather and lack of snow over the winter some boats either got stuck on rocks or disintegrated completely. There were still some determined wee boats and in less than 10 minutes we had our winner, a yellow boat owned by Susanne’s friend Clair. She had the last 20 boats on the list and was glad of her last minute purchase!
Thanks to everyone who bought boats or helped on the day including the staff at Netherurd, My parents, Graham, Susanne, Chantelle, Megan,  Division Commissioner  Anne, Karen, Margaret Anne and my County Commissioner Margaret. 

Laura x

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