Today was a day full of skill building sessions and exploring the beautiful city of Chicago. I did four sessions all on very different things that will help the girls with their take action projects. The first session I went to was all about media and communication. I thought this was a very important session because a lot of what I do involves social media and I know that I can work on being more effective with my delivery. I was kind of surprised with some of the chaperones' aversion to social media saying that it was terrible and ruining how we communicate, but my take on it is it is happening whether we like it or not so we might as well embrace it!
The next session was all about mentoring for healthy self-esteem, which was very similar to the Dove self esteem fund sleepover curriculum. I found it fascinating that despite being from around the world a lot of the girls struggled with the same problems with self esteem and body image. We also did a really interesting activity where we had to write ten of our traits on little strips of paper and then rank them from what we like most to least about ourselves. Then we had to take away five of these traits and see how we felt- did we still feel like ourselves? Did we like what we saw? It was very interesting and I definitely want to try the activity with girls.
The third session was about fund development which I thought would be really interesting and helpful because I want to start doing some bigger things, but I found that it was not really relevant to Girl Guides of Canada because a lot of the policies and such were different than the United States. I will have to do a bit more research before I start applying for grants and stuff but it was a good start.
The final session was about partnering up with the community which I quite enjoyed. We got to talk about some of the projects the girls were planning to do which was really interesting. The girls from Canada are going to start quite a project- a mentorship program for young girls (probably between 12-17) with female politicians and women in leadership positions. Right now it is just an idea but I will fully support it and I am so proud of them for all of their hard work on their take action plan. :)
We had some time to work on the take action plans and then it was time for dinner. The girls decided that they could not leave Chicago without trying authentic deep dish pizza so they ordered that and I have never seen a bigger pizza or held a piece of food that was so heavy! It was delicious though and I am glad we had it but man it was big!
The final order of business for the day was a scavenger hunt around Chicago where we got to see the Bean (pictured below) in Millennium Park, the Art Institute of Chicago, the water tower- one of the only buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire, and a few other significant buildings around our hotel on the Magnificent Mile. It was a lot of fun and we got to see all of the sights we wanted to on our trip to this amazing city!
It is so hard to believe that we only have one day left! It has gone by so fast and I am so proud of all of the work the delegates from around the world have done and I am confident they will change the world!
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