I can't believe today was the last day of the Girls World Forum! As always we started off bright and early with an expo of various organizations including the WAGGGS World Centres, the US Peace Core, UNICEF, Heifer International, and a few others. It was interesting to see what different organizations are doing to help reach the Millennium Development Goals and I got a few good resources to help with some of my projects.
This is a picture of the Canadian puzzle piece. Each of the delegations was given a puzzle piece to write their pledge on to represent their take action plan.
We had a very special opportunity to see a sneak preview of a brand new mini series premiering on PBS (I have not looked into when it will start in Canada) Half the Sky based on the book of the same name. We got to see the segment about education in Vietnam and the challenges that girls face just to make it through school. It was fascinating and I was in tears for most of it because education is such an important issue for me. I will definitely be watching this show and will talk about it some more once it is available in Canada.
The closing ceremonies for the GWF was excellent! We had an amazing woman come and speak to us as the keynote speaker. Her name is Dr. Tererai Trent and she was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her all time favourite guest. She is a woman from Zimbabwe who yearned to go to school and get an education. She wrote down all of her goals and dreams down on paper, sealed them in a tin can, and buried it under a rock. Years later she returned to the place she had buried her dreams and had accomplished so much including a bachelors, masters, and doctorate degree. I was also in tears for most of her talk and was so inspired. Her organization is called Tinogona which means "it is acheivable" in her native language. Here is more information about her amazing work. http://www.tinogona.com/
There was some time between the closing ceremonies and the final dinner and party to do a bit of shopping so we ran around the Magnificent Mile to get some last minute souvenirs and were quite successful! We got some tourist-y things like postcards and snowglobes, some t-shirts and stuffed animals and then we found the Hershey store... I wanted to get some Hershey chocolate for my dad so we went in and got some things like fudge, chocolate bars, enormous Reese's Pieces and then we found what you see above- a personalized chocolate bar. I think it is the coolest idea ever and the St.Patrick's Day theme looks an awful lot like trefoils don't you think?
The final party was a blast! There were photobooths, icecream sundae buffets, sumo wrestling suits, face painting, and of course great music and food. We had so much fun just hanging out and dancing and taking pictures. It was right at the end of the night that I had a realization of just how amazing the global sisterhood of Guiding and Scouting is. The dancing was over, the food was gone and all that remained were girls and chaperones standing in a circle holding hands and singing Linger. It was incredibly moving and so many people were crying (of course I was one of them). We all gave enormous hugs and headed upstairs to pack. It was such an amazing night!
Here is a picture of my super cool facepaint :)
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