Friday 28 August

After the daily reflection, the first task was to discuss questions such as "Where am I now? Where am I at work…. with my relationships… and in Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting?" Through our discussions we had time to reflect on our current situation.

The next session of the day was on goal setting. We used the SMART model to set our goals:
We considered a professional or personal goal to achieve, identified an objective which could support the achievement of our goal and finally we identified a target which we would need to reach.

After the coffee break we had five workshops on project management, conflict transformation, co-education, lobbing and change management.

Change

The workshop on change dealt with the concept of change and its effect on people, plans and project. Especially unplanned or unexpected changes can have a great impact on lives and future plans, and we looked at how to prepare and anticipate change as well as looking at the human behavioural pattern when faced with change. Something every leader should take into account.

Project management

In this workshop we could learn how to structure the project. We had two exercises to learn how to do this: product breakdown structure and product flow diagram. We divided into three groups and planned a camp using the product breakdown structure. We decided on a theme, the people, the resources and the materials and then we looked at the product flow diagram which looked at priorities.

Conflict transformation

In the session we brainstormed about things that could anger or confuse us in different situations, and how we would react. The exercise clarified the definition of the conflict, the main concepts of problem solving. Two of the concepts were non-violent strategies and the stairs methods which helped us to change the conflict to an agreement.

Lobbying

We learned about the definition of Lobbying - is a way of convincing people (decision-maker).

In Guiding we lobby to get the better support from others. To have the better result, we have three steps:

1. Obtaining access, legitimacy and attracting interest
2. Method of engagement, getting the message across
3. Following it through

Co-education

What is education and what is co-education? Education is to teach, learn and communicate. Co-education is all of the above, but with girls and boys together, in the same environment.

In the workshop we had a debate for and against co-education in WAGGGS. Girls in favour of single sex education said that the girls need a space to discuss our own interests and feel free to express ourselves. WAGGGS creates a space to empower girls and if boys and girls were together it would be complicated to achieve our goal.

Girls in favour of co-education defended their point of view saying that it is important to work both with girls and boys because in daily life, school, job, girls have to deal with boys and by being together they can learn from each other. Besides, it is important that boys understand girls and vice versa because they need to work together from diversity.

At the end of the debate the intermediaries concluded that WAGGGS should support both the only girls associations and the mixed associations.

Female leadership

We discussed two different styles of leadership and how each might be traditionally identified as either ’masculine’ or ’feminine’, and whether we thought men and women inherently had different leadership styles or not. We also looked at biographies of famous female leaders and discussed the different methods they had used to lead people. It was interesting to see the different perspectives of participants about how these women had led people, and also to see what sort of obstacles the women had faced on their leadership journey. At the end of the session we talked about how we could grow leadership in our regions.

We had an evening of Kenyan food, music, dancing, and presented gifts to Kenya Girls Guides Association. A lot of people wore traditional Kenyan dress, and it was great to see all the colourful clothes. Everyone enjoyed the night until the power went off!

Group 4
Cata (Costa Rica), Eva (Kenya), Fatima (U.A.E.), Kaae (Korea), Megan (U.K.), Ony (Madagascar), Sarah (Germany)