The Great Guide Getaway to Switzerland

The Event participants staying at Our Chalet ventured off site to go snow shoeing and igloo building (and had loads of fun), to make way for the day visitors…

The second day of the Great Guide Getaway to Switzerland was a huge success! More than 160 Guides and Guiders participated in activities throughout the day on site at Our Chalet. The weather ordered couldn't have been better, clear blue skies lingered closely to the snow capped mountain peaks with the sun gently filtering through the branches of tall pine trees.
 
As the day progressed you could hear the strong, clear chant of the Marmot patrol in competition with that of the Mountain Goat patrol. The top competitors of the day were the Snow Angels who took top prize in the WAGGGS Wide game and the Gummy Bears who leapt to first place in Snow Olympics.  
 
The WAGGGS Wide game challenged girls to learn about the eight Millennium Development Goals, the components of the WAGGGS flag, the five regions of WAGGGS, the locations of the four World Centres, and what the Centenary celebration is all about!
 
The staff of Our Chalet is looking forward to what the next day of festivities will bring!

Kylea, Winter Volunteer

I’ve got to admit that I was slightly concerned about day four. Sally had warned us all to be prepared for bad weather, heavy snow and cold temperatures. We started off the day layered up with plenty more warm layers in the rucksack, and at morning meeting went through the cold weather options for the day.

The girls from Lenk walked up the hill slowly as the snow began to fall with lots of tired faces after a jam packed week. However, as Sally addressed the girls at the Opening Ceremony it was easy to tell that there was still plenty of enthusiasm for day four here at Our Chalet. After raising the flag the girls broke into their teams and split off into the day’s activities.

Today I was leading the WAGGGS wide game and the Eagles came along first and when I asked “Are you READY Eagles?!” roared back that they were “BORN READY!” The game went off with a bang as the girls had to pop a balloon in order to find out where to start.

The game was broken down into four stations; firstly, dissecting the WAGGGS flag; secondly a station discovering the different Regions and the World Centres and thirdly a “Celebration Station” where the girls had to take a photo of themselves which had to contain the centenary, whilst lending a hand, having a party, and with an international twist.

The fourth station introduced a dose of sobriety as the girls discussed what WAGGGS would be tackling with its Millennium Development Goals and addressed the necessity of the goals by matching them with the WAGGGS message and some rather startling statistics.

To help contextualise the statistics the girls counted out 100 grains of rice; one grain was the entire 10 million members of WAGGGS, all 100 grains were the people denied access to education; and to add another grain of rice (or 10 million people) represented all those without clean water. The girls were timed whilst doing this and incredibly shocked when they realised that in the five minutes or so that they had spent doing these activities, approximately 100 children had died of preventable causes, 5 women had died during childbirth, and 36 people had died of HIV / Aids; about the same number of people who had arrived on the buses to the Chalet this morning. The need to empower women was also reflected by the fact that as women own less than 1% of the worlds property, that would be equivalent to men owning 73 of the 74 beds here at the Chalet – and still owning the pillow of the remaining women’s bed.

The girls absorbed these facts, admitted how lucky they felt and how necessary it was for WAGGGS to be tackling these issues of inequality. The girls moved onto their next station slightly pensive and hopefully thinking how through Guiding they can make a difference to the world that we live in today. As the Eagles met back between Main Chalet and Spycher to assess their work and photos, the sun started to peek from behind a cloud and the Mountain Goats swept past with a shout. I duly met the Squirrels at the shop and led them onto the Wide Game. The Squirrels were even more imaginative than the Eagles with their photos, using international neckers and balloons to make the 100 in their photos.

By lunchtime the sun was blasting out and it was incredibly warm here at the Chalet. The 19 centimetres of snow predicted to fall today as discussed at the morning meeting seemed a distant memory as the girls and leaders sat on the grass, admiring the beautiful view and sliding down the hill behind the Chalet. It was a tough job but the leaders had to try it out too – health and safety/quality control obviously being a main concern... (!)

After lunch the Mountain Goats were next to participate at in the Wide Game. As I was based at on the picnic tables outside Main Chalet there was a great vantage point of the Snow Olympics in the deep snow at the bottom of Baby Chalet hill. The girls seemed to be screaming, shrieking, cheering each other on and generally having fantastic fun.

The Wide Game ended with the Marmots. Just when I thought the calibre of photography couldn’t get any better, the “Bruce and Mary” team surpassed all expectations as an A-Level Art student drew an incredibly accurate map of the WAGGGS region (pretty tricky whilst being drawn on a balloon) and drew even with the “Iced Tea” team from the Eagles. The two photos were brought before the Deputy and World Centre Manager who declared there could only be one winner, the “Bruce and Mary” team.

At the Closing Ceremony the Snow Olympic and WAGGGS Wide Game champions received their prizes (song books – what else when Emma had said that the Lenk group had excelled on campfire all day?!), the flag was brought down and the day ended with a rendition of “Taps”.

It had been a truly excellent day. The sun had shone all day, the girls had been enthusiastic, willing and responsive, even when faced with facts that it would have been so easy to try and ignore. Amongst the Chalet staff after Closing Ceremony conversation buzzed with the fact that today had been even better than yesterday; the GGUK Great Guide Getaway to Switzerland just keeps getting better.

 As I write this sat here in the Helen Storrow room, night has fallen but there are no stars to be seen. Perhaps this is finally the snow clouds delivering snow to replenish the supply used for Snow Olympics, and tomorrow will dawn just as beautiful as today turned out to be.

Hannah, Winter Volunteer