Volunteering – Page 2

Guide Dogs and Trefoil Guild

Meet my new friend Harry. I’m not a doggy person but he’s kind of cute! He was the guest of honour (with his puppy walker Sarah) at my first Trefoil Guild meeting to talk about Guide Dogs and the need for funds and more puppy walkers.

Sarah has been a Guide Dog puppy walker for a number of years, and Harry is her 5th puppy. He is a HUGE retriever/labrador cross and was so well behaved. He is almost at the end of his puppy walking stage, and will hopefully go to Guide Dog boot camp and graduate to be an essential part of a blind or partially sighted person’s life. She spoke with such a passion about her role as a puppy walker and the urgent need for more. The call for funds is a common one in an organisation which doesn’t receive any government funding, but I didn’t realise there were other support roles required too. Each puppy costs Guide Dogs UK around £50,000 from birth to retirement at about 9 or 10, and yet each potential owner only has to pay 50p as a token contractural amount to get their dog. Puppy walkers take a young puppy and train it over a year to strict guide dog standards to produce a well behaved dog, ready for final training on a harness before it is handed over to someone who really needs one. Sarah told us a number of stories about people whose lives have been transformed for the better because of their partnership with their pooch.

The Trefoil Guild is Guiding for adults. Like WI for Guiding types really. As I’m a Guiding geek and a WI member, I thought I’d give it a go. I found my local branch and they were really welcoming and helpful. I did feel incredibly young at the meeting (being at least 20 years younger than everyone else in the room!), but everyone was really lovely and they went out of their way to chat to me.

Like the WI, the Trefoil has gained an ‘older woman’ reputation, despite being open to anyone 18+. It was so nice being somewhere where I wasn’t organising something or responsible for something. I just went, moved a few chairs to help out, and left. Bliss! I will be back next month for more, and when I join, I will be channelling my Guiding geekiness more and going for the Voyage Awards. I’m a sucker for a badge!

Getting to Know You – Ice Breaker Activities

It’s the start of the new term at Guides and as usual we have some new starters. I do my Guiding in a fairly rural area, so most of the Guides know each other from the main school in the village, but it seems that there is a huge gulf between the lofty year 7’s and the new year 5’s.

Looking for some new ideas, I stumbled across icebreakers.ws which has a number of interesting games to get everyone talking and learning more about each other. Who knows, they may actually find out that the year 6’s aren’t an alien species and are quite interesting!

I’ve tried the Bingo style games before where you have a sheet of paper and have to go around finding someone who has an elder brother, someone who is left-handed and someone who can’t stand One Direction. This is good at making the Guides talk to people outside of their normal friend group because Nancy the new girl is the only one with a hamster, and if they want to get that signed off, they need to share the fact that they hate marmite.

Another suggestion on the website is the blanket game where you hide one person behind a blanket and everyone else tries to guess who it is. I find this works best when you know each other a bit first. Rainbows won’t peek while you are hiding someone, but Guides aren’t beyond a bit of cheating. Or is it just mine?

I think I’ll be trying the connecting stories game within the new patrols. One person starts off a story such as “I had jam on toast for breakfast this morning” and then the next person needs to provide an anecdote related to this such as “my mum made strawberry jam this summer” followed by someone else’s “I went to a pick your own farm and we picked 3 punnets of delicious strawberries”. The linked stories have to carry on as long as possible.

With my old unit, I played the “move to the left” game where everyone sits in a circle on their own chair. The person in the middle makes a statement such as “move to the left if you have an older brother”. Anyone this applies to has to move to the left and sit in the next chair. If a Guide doesn’t have an older brother, they stay put, which can mean they get someone sat on their lap. If there is a complete pile up, you can rescue the poor unfortunate Guide left sitting underneath 4 others by making a statement that you know applies to her alone.

Do you have any good ice breaker activities to share?

Girlguiding is the leading charity for girls and young women in the UK, with 553,633 members. Thanks to the dedication and support of 100,000 amazing volunteers, we are active in every part of the UK, giving girls and young women a space where they can be themselves, have fun, build brilliant friendships, gain valuable life skills and make a positive difference to their lives and their communities. We build girls’ confidence and raise their aspirations. We give them the chance to discover their full potential and encourage them to be a powerful force for good. We give them a space to have fun. We run Rainbows (5—7 years), Brownies (7—10 years), Guides (10—14 years) and The Senior Section (14—25 years). If you can give some time to help support or lead a unit, just click here or call 0800 1 69 59 01.

Dear August…

Oh August. Our relationship started so well. You gave me time to start blogging again, I started creating, I got things done.
My nephew came to stay and then later on there was the celebration of his Christening.
Husband’s birthday came and went, and the Craftyguidelets’ vision of a sailing themed birthday cake was realised.
The Craftyguidelets and I found 38 Books About Town book benches in 3 different areas of London, did some sightseeing, fell in love with the impressionists in the National Gallery, and completed the summer reading challenge at the library. Oh August, you kept us busy.

But towards the end it went wrong. A trying extended-family holiday culminated in little Craftyguidelet breaking her arm and spending 2 nights in hospital. How could you let that happen August? My little girl looked so tiny on that big bed as they wheeled her away for surgery under general anaesthetic.
You brought me flowers – hydrangeas to remind me of our lovely holiday in Cornwall and roses from husband for our wedding anniversary.
But it’s too late August. The pain of the hospital stay and seeing my poor little girl’s deformed arm, and now the huge cast that she has to carry around is too much.

It’s over August. I’ve decided to give September a go. The Craftyguidelets will be back at school and my volunteering with Guiding, the WI and school starts up again. I’ll need to be busy preparing Craftyguider for Christmas, as well as starting my own preparations. I’m also joining the Trefoil Guild and hoping to start my Voyage Award.

So long, and perhaps I’ll see you around some time in the future.

Craftyguider x

World Thinking Day 2014

I’m shining a light for World Thinking Day 2014. Happy birthday Lord and Lady Baden Powell and thanks for the adventure.

Calling all Brownies

Right-click to download high-res image

2014 is the year that Brownies celebrate their Centenary. All members of Girlguiding from Rainbows to Adults have a Big Brownie Birthday Challenge badge that they can work towards so we can join in with the celebrations, even if we aren’t Brownies. Challenges take inspiration from various milestone years in the last 100 years in the Brownie programme.
1957 was Baden-Powell Centenary year (being 100 years since the birth of Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting and Guiding) and Brownies did six World Good Turns on the theme of Houses of Today and Tomorrow. On the evening of World Thinking Day (22nd February), all members put lights in their window to celebrate the joint birthdays of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell.
In this Brownie Centenary year, and also Hertfordshire County’s Centenary year, Girlguiding is challenging as many members and former members of Guiding to put a light in their window on the evening of 22nd February. It doesn’t matter if you were thrown out of the Brownies (if I had a pound for every time…) or if you have your 40 year service award, put a light in your window to remember Robert and Olave Baden-Powell’s birthday and the contribution they made to the lives of millions of people around the world.

Time to dig out those Christmas lights again and think of something imaginative for my window.

What are your memories of Guiding?

Theo Paphitis #SBS Winner

I wanted to get more focused on my blog and my webshop in 2014. I’m still on catch up, so my targets for January were just to get my workspace organised. Simple but achievable.

However, I did start a couple of things. I have a plan in place for what themes I am concentrating on for www.craftyguider.com month by month. I have started following more accounts on instagram, pinterest and twitter, as well as more blogs on bloglovin, and I started entering Theo Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday competition on twitter. Two weeks in, I won!

My winning tweet said “When I was a Guide, I earned 2 Craft badges. Now I’m a leader, I design and make badges.”

I am so pleased Theo Paphitis personally chose me, and having had a quick look through the #SBS winners website, the benefits are fabulous, I’ve increased my exposure on twitter, and I hope this, with a bit of hard work, translates to more sales in my webshop. And best of all, I hope to meet Theo and get a certificate at his next winners event.

I’d love to hear from you if you have any creatives you think I should be following on social media. And obviously feel free to click on the links above to follow me!

Organising Cups

There is a game we have played at Guides. The group is split into about seven different groups and are shown a pile of cups. Each group is given a secret instruction to carry out such as put all the cups in a straight line, keep one cup in each hand, turn all the cups upside down, keep all the cups right side up, take all the cups outside etc. Pandemonium then ensues as the Guides run around, the cups go flying and violence breaks out.

A halt is called and the Guides then share their instructions with each other and work out if they can work together to achieve harmony. Lots of the challenges can be achieved by working together: the person holding the cups can hold them whilst they are placed in their straight line. However, sometimes a compromise cannot be reached: you cannot have all the cups upside down and right side up at the same time.

I have lots of cups that I am trying to arrange: kids, blog, business, house, volunteering, crafting etc. On Wednesday evening after a day making Christmas cards with the kids and making sure they had started their homework, they were having their bath with their dad and I was waiting for the first one to get out for hair drying. I started thinking about what I was going to do once they’d gone to bed. I am on the cable rib for a baby’s pullover which I need to get finished. I want to get my blog going and have lots of themes I want to cover. In doing Christmas cards I found some of the Christmas kits from magazines that I’d never made so I could make them. Great British Bake Off is on. I can actually participate in #handmadehour on twitter as I’m not at Guides tonight. I need to tackle Magazine Mountain. This carried on until my head exploded.

In the end, I wrote this blog post whilst watching a recorded Bake Off Masterclass after finalising my online shopping order. I had to abandon the knitting and cross stitching; not easy to type, sew and manipulate yarn at the same time. I got a couple of tweets onto #handmade hour to show my face, but after several nights of disturbed sleep, a full on half term day and a couple of hours on the laptop, I wasn’t fit for anything else.

I see other bloggers who post every day or couple of days. Some people run successful craft businesses whilst working full time. Surely I can do all that too? Am I just being disorganised or distracted too much by twitter or Minion Rush?

I have to remind myself that everyone is different. Do these people have two bright little girls who deserve their mum’s attention? Do they have a Guide unit to run weekly? Do they also have other volunteer roles?

It is so important to work out how your life works for you. You cannot know the full circumstances of someone else’s life. They might have a cleaner to do the housework. They may be 3 years into their chosen path whilst you are at the start of your journey.

In the meantime, I will carry on doing what I can and trying to follow my own advice! Some of the cups will remain the wrong way up, but as long as I have the important ones in a row, that’ll do me.

Who gets your cards?

As someone who makes cards to sell, I should use this post to try and persuade you to buy everyone you have ever known a card for each wedding, birthday, anniversary, thank you, RSVP, new school, exam good luck, exam congratulations etc. etc. etc. It would generate a good income for my Guide unit and I could happily craft away all day and all night.

However, I am having a dilemma. As I make cards, people expect handmade cards from me. I can just imagine family members thinking “This is a shop bought card. Why don’t I deserve one of her handmade cards? Couldn’t she be bothered to make me one?” However, I know so many people through school, university, work, family, friends, their kids, their grandchildren… I was there when they got married. Each date gets religiously entered on my fruit phone and set up to remind me every year of the date. Can I really keep coming up with original cards for every occasion (and also remember which ones I sent them last year)?

Where do I stop? How many anniversaries do I send cards for? Do I keep sending cards to a friend I haven’t spoken to in years, who never sends me cards and whose kids I’ve never met? “Mummy, who is Louise on this card?”

I’ve made a decision over the last few months to stop sending cards to most friends’ kids once they’ve had a couple of birthdays. My friends don’t send them to my kids so I’m sure they won’t notice. Equally, I think I’ll cut back on the anniversary cards. We just got cards from our parents, one relative and a friend this year. We’ve been married 8 years now so it’s not a big anniversary.

I’m sorry dear friends and family. I do still think of you on your birthdays. Hopefully you’ll all get a handmade Christmas card this year (or at least one of those school fundraising cards drawn by the Craftyguidelets and printed), but perhaps I won’t be sending a card for your second cousin twice removed’s decree nisi.

Having said all of that, please do support crafters who hand make cards. They can usually create personalised cards to a specified theme in a few days for around the same cost as the celestial hog lot, and to a higher standard. And you know that there will not be another card like it on their mantelpiece for their special day.

And obviously I would like to put in a special word for my Craftyguider online shop. 100% of the profit goes to my local Guide unit to contribute to running costs, and the postage cost is a flat fee so no matter what you order, you only pay £1.50.

How many cards do you send out each year?

Because you said yes…

Because you said yes…

A young girl will feel the pride of being someone special as she carefully puts on her uniform for the very first time.

A girl can move to a new town and have “instant friendships” with girls she might never have met.

Parents will experience that special pride when they listen to their daughter say the Guide Promise for the first time.

Bright eyes will become a little brighter with excitement as the kindling finally catches on the first camp fire.

Nervous giggles will emit from tents as girls try to fall asleep their first night of camp.

The community, and yes, the world will be richer because a girl has learned the importance of caring for her environment and the warm feeling that comes from giving service to someone less fortunate than herself.

A parent will find a Promise Badge carefully tucked away in a drawer as their daughter packs to leave home for her first adventures as a young adult.

A young woman will contact the Guides one day and say, “I had so much fun when I was a Guide, I’d like to try being a Leader.”

…and the circle will continue – because you said yes!

source and author unknown

When I was about 8 or 9, I moved from Highgate to Enfield, changed school and just started to make friends. I used to play outside with my siblings, and my sister and I were spotted by one of the neighbours. Mrs Cockaday lived a few doors down and was just about to open a new Brownie and Guide unit. My mum was happy for us to make new friends and try something new so we were amongst the first batch of girls to join. Because of my age, I was only a Brownie for about a year and gained my Agility and Road badges. I then flew up to Guides and my Guidey swottiness began.

I loved being a Guide. I went to all the camps, got all the collective badge emblems, over 50 interest badges, my service flash, patrol pennants, patrol purpose patches, Queens Guide award, Baden Powell Trefoil award – and then I was old enough to be a Ranger Guide. Captain retired and I moved on.

I joined Rangers with a friend. We went to a Youth Hostel, painted the hut, did our swimming trial for kayaking, and I made plans to do the new Queens Guide award. But then it all went wrong. The Venture Scouts were going to close, probably due to lack of leaders or members, so the Rangers were going to convert to Venture Scouts to combine the two units. This would have been OK if the boys in the Venture Unit hadn’t have been my little brother’s mates. No way was I giving up my evening to spend time with boys, especially them. Unfortunately I hadn’t been told about becoming a Young Leader so I left Guiding.

A few years later, after I’d been to University (oblivious to SSAGO too as I commuted in 2 hours each way every day so couldn’t be in any of the clubs), I spotted an article in the local paper. “Guide unit to close unless they find a new leader” sort of thing. Much to the surprise of the District Commissioner, I answered the ad saying I’d help. I ended up becoming leader, much to my surprise as I imagined Guide leaders all being older women.

I’ve done most of the volunteer jobs in Guiding – leader of Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Rangers, Young Leaders, District and Division Commissioner, I hold my camp, holiday, first aid and music licences, I can still tie my knots and I can light a fire using just one Cub Scout and some kindling. Almost 19 years later and I am still here. I tell people I had two daughters so they can take over my unit when I’m too doddery to carry on. My blood is Guiding blue.

But the most important thing is that I’ve been part of the lives of hundreds of girls and young women because Mrs Cockaday, my Guide Captain, said yes.

If you want to say yes, just click here to find out more. You don’t have to have been a Guidey swot, women who were “kicked out of the Brownies” as a child can still apply, men can help out in various ways. Even if you have never been in Guiding at all, you can be trained up. It looks great on a CV and a UCAS form, and as I sit here blurry eyed thinking of all those circles I’ve been part of, there are girls all over the UK who won’t get the chance to join in due to lack of leaders.

Unless you say yes.

Motivated Mum

motivated past participle, past tense of mo·ti·vate (Verb)

Verb

Provide (someone) with a motive for doing something.
Stimulate (someone’s) interest in or enthusiasm for doing something.

In the past, for various reasons, getting motivated wasn’t easy. There is always the eternal competition between what I want to do, what I should be doing and what I have to do. If I don’t want to do what I have to do, I get resentful because it’s stopping me doing what I want to do, and if I do what I want to do, I get a guilt trip because what I should be doing isn’t getting done. All in all, I end up in a mass of doing nothing at all. Still following?

It also makes me a bit lastminute dot com. Guides is on a Wednesday, so I end up taking ages to get down to planning things because Wednesday is so far away isn’t it? Surely I can squeeze in a few more wants and shoulds before this have to? Then I’m racing around on Wednesday itself to get something ready (as well as doing Craft Club, looking after the Craftyguidelets, cooking dinner and all the other things that come up). Thursday is Mother-in-law day and Rainbows so I always dash around trying to get the house tidy before she gets here. She probably wouldn’t mind that I hadn’t dusted, but it’s what Daughter-in-laws panic about, isn’t it?

Enter Motivated Mum. The new, improved me who gets things done in plenty of time, who balances family, volunteering, housework and me-time.

1. Don’t get overwhelmed

I use my Google calendar for appointments etc., but I also have a pretty slimline paper diary for my to do list.

When I get a blank sheet of A4, it fills up with everything I want and need to do. It gets so big, I look at it and get put off from doing it. I accumulate several scraps of paper with things to do on them which I can never find it when I need them. Things that are important get mixed up with things that don’t really matter. With this diary I physically can’t add too much to a page. Also, things are dated so I know my deadlines. World Book Day coming up? Need a costume? That needs to be entered in plenty of time so I can get it done rather than a last minute scrabble through the washing pile on the day.

2. Tap the app

I bought an app for my phone called Motivated Mom (yes, it’s from the US). It suggests housework tasks to do every day so that over the course of a week, in theory my house is clean and tidy. It doesn’t factor in Craftyguidelet chaos though. It also suggests things like washing the garage door and other large tasks to do once a year. I’ve programmed in things like sorting out my ‘take upstairs’ bag every couple of days.

I’ve also started a new section in Google calendars for my blog posts and twitter hashtag hours so I remember what happens when. If I’m free, I can join in with the chats, and my blog posts are vaguely themed for each day.

3. Inspiration

I am reading ‘The Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin. There are so many things in this book that seem such simple and effective ideas. Obviously her life doesn’t match mine, so I’m going to try a mini happiness project. I’m starting with health and I’ll be developing that soon.

4. Perspiration

One of the things that has been holding me back is my health. I’m tired all the time, I suffered from PND and I have a dodgy back. I’ve eliminated so many things from my diet, went on and then gave up antidepressants and I’ve tried seeing a chiropractor. I’m now going to try and focus on exercise a bit more. Today I walked the girls to school and then walked to the local farm shop, bought some veg and then walked home which was almost a 3 mile round trip.

It was a beautiful day today so it was lovely being outside (apart from the weight of the veg I had to carry and my shoes which rubbed just a bit too much). Having a bad back has prevented me from using the gym for a while, but I need to allocate some time now so I can get more active more often.

I am going to try harder to get more enthusiastic and interested about things, and hopefully I have the tools to do this now. WI bag is ready, Craft Club bag is ready, Guide email sent, now to sort out cleaning the toilets. Hmmm, can anyone tell me how to get motivated to do that?