The 1st Wigston Brownies and a guest from the 8th Wigston Brownies recently completed their first Brownie holiday since COVID…
Hayfields is such a well appointed venue we headed there again. Many of the girls came up from Rainbows this year and most of them have not slept away from home before, so a Brownie holiday was a big challenge for them. They did really well dealing with the strangeness of it all and looking after each other.
As builders have to work as a team and follow precise instructions so too our Brownies worked as a team to carefully complete the steps to prepare, marzipan, ice and decorate Christmas cakes. We made and painted salt dough Christmas decorations, built and decorated a wooden crate, designed a railway route out of toilet roll tubes, completed our chores (without too many groans) and learned about some incredible women. Together we had fun and completed the AMEY engineering badge, several unit meeting activities and were awarded a Nights Away badge.
The weekend could not have happened without an incredible amount of guiding teamwork. We needed three leaders to run the event and months ago I appealed on social media for volunteers. The wonderful ladies Rohanne from Shepshed and Colette from Aylestone contacted me and we planned the activities together. Unfortunately Colette fell ill 5 days before the holiday so I turned to social media again and Sue from Market Harborough kindly stepped forward in the nick of time.
Brownie commissioner Sue swiftly
approved the residential event notification form again and off we went. The ladies were a pleasure to work with, mutually supportive and very much appreciated.
Credit should also go the Leader who trained me. Valerie Williams in Bristol was my ‘Tawny’ for years and took me under her wing quite literally as I completed my leadership qualification. She led half a dozen Brownie holidays during which I learned so much about managing an event and coping with any issues that may arise. She ‘grew’ me so I can ‘grow girls’. Thank you to Rohanne, Sue, Colette, Sue, Nadine & the Hayfields Team and Valerie.
By: Tracy Harris
