This summer Mia, a ranger from Girlguiding Worle District went on a GOLD trip!

The 2023 Guiding Overseas Linked with Development (GOLD) project took place in St Lucia. Read about what team got up to here…

The focus of GOLD is on sustainable projects that making a lasting difference. St Lucia was an in-person project, and the first year of the GOLD project in this country. The main aims of the project were:

The trip aim was too:

To increase the capacity of the Girlguiding Association of St Lucia by supporting the recruitment and initial training of new volunteers

To increase retention of existing members

To support Girlguiding Association of St Lucia to develop a national programme that all volunteers can use to plan their meetings

We worked alongside and in partnership with the Girlguiding Association of St Lucia, supporting and promoting the development of the Guiding community in St Lucia and the UK. During the project we ran 17 hours of training, engaged 50 young members, met with 25 members of the wider community, worked with 6 new adult members and reached 524 people on social media. We facilitated discussions on recruiting and retaining Guiders. Concrete action points coming from the project included plans to run a skills audit for adult members as it was identified that people feel valued when their skills were recognised and used. There was also discussions of a formal induction for new Guiders including allocating mentors and we discussed and proposed an example induction checklist. Finally, it was identified that it would be good to have some training on social media and internet communications with a focus on recruitment but also for disseminating information to existing leaders. This is a potential avenue for a future GOLD project.

In consultation with young members we discussed plans for the programme and also their centenary celebrations in 2025. Young people expressed how “Brownies makes my life fun”, “Brownies is great and everyone should join” and how they were proud to be “part of an amazing organisation”. We collated their feedback on what they want to learn and be involved with and facilitated discussions with national leaders on programme themes and development. A new national programme is something that the Girl Guides of St Lucia want to achieve by their 2025 centenary celebrations and through our project it became clear that they need their programme to be consistent from North to South and to have a structure and framework with key ideas but remains flexible and varied.

For recruitment, we met with potential leaders in the West of the island looking to open a new Brownie and Guide unit. Two of the leaders were completely new to Guiding but left our training planning their first Guide meeting with an action plan of what steps they needed to take in the ongoing weeks and months. We also visited the first Guide and Brownie meeting since the COVID lockdown in Micoud, the East of the Island, running sessions on the Brownie story, promise and Guiding around the world. We were delighted to give them their first ever badge and join in their excitement. The Girl Guides of St Lucia are strategically planning new units to open over the next few years.

GOLD has a huge impact on leaders and participants, and we developed skills such as teamwork, training, leadership and adaptability. We dealt with unexpected changes of plans, a serious tropical storm and constantly changeable weather. We took countless buses, adventured in the rainforest and had literal mountain top moments. Our GOLD journey is not over. In recent years, GOLD pathways have been introduced to encourage participants to give back to Girlguiding UK in the years following their project. This could include becoming a peer educator or starting the trainers qualification, taking a leadership role in their District or Division or looking at taking members away internationally. We all hope to take our learning from the Girl Guides of St Lucia and go on to share these new skills and experiences within our local areas.

Thank you Mia for such a great report and we are glad you had a wonderful time!