Fingers crossed - Final final briefing

We met for our 7th briefing on 11th June at Emma's house again, with 5 weeks to go! It had all come around so soon and there was still so much to do! We spent most of Saturday going through our programme plans, amending them and reminding ourselves of them.
Unfortunately we were very sad to hear that Sarah, our group documenter, could not come on our trip in the summer. We really appreciated all her hard work and effort put into our project plans and briefings and were really sad to lose a great team member.
Saturday night we finally saw daylight and went out for a yummy spanish meal and to a swanky bar in London!
So 5 weeks to go, lots of laminating, lots of emails and lots of condoms are on the cards for the next few weeks as we prepare to finally go! Exciting :)

6th (?) briefing

Our 6th briefing was the 2010 GOLD group's 2nd one, and we joined on the Saturday to meet this years teams at Gilwell Park. We were really lucky to have an opportunity that most GOLD groups don't get of trying out some of our activities with the teams there! We ran a very successful 2 hour workshop, where we included some of our activities that we thought would be useful and enjoyable for others. We received some very positive feedback and allowed us to make some improvements to our games and it really boosted our confidence.
In the evening we transformed into the Spice Girls in full gusto to represent the 90's in true Honduras style, in our Honduras pants of course! (Watch the video!) We spent a very chilly night camping outside before leaving early Sunday ready to embark on our GOLD adventure once more.

Starting again...FUN BRIEFING 2010

2010 came round soo quickly! Having put all our project plans to bed after a manic few months in 2009 it soon became time to get back into GOLD again. The usual Sunday night telephone conferences started again and decided on a FUN briefing in London to have a good old catch up and get the ball rolling again.
We all screamed our lungs out in the London Dungeons on 6th March and had a great time being scared senseless and losing blood circulation to our hands. We had a lovely meal and after LOTS of nattering and catching up we set ourselves raring to go (actually go this time!) to Honduras in the summer!

What-should-have been-debrief

Four of team Honduras minus the two Nicolas meet up at what should of been out GOLD debrief at Bounds Green Scout Park in North London. We went to keep Egypt company and to have a bit of a catch up. It was great to hear all the stories from Egypts project and see their photos. We also had some time to reflect on how far we had already come as a team and how much we were all looking forward to GOLD Honduras 2010.

In the evening we all piled into the Scout Parks minibus and headed to Alexandra Palace for the annual firework display. It was fantastic to watch the fireworks exploding over the London skyline. Then it was a walk back to the Scout Park through the crowds which earned us some well deserved and tasty takeaway for dinner.

Disaster strikes!

Then, 2 weeks before travelling, we received a very sad phone call from Emma to say that the trip had to be postponed. The political situation in Honduras had been very unstable with a military coup and the president being exiled. It was decided that it was too dangerous to travel and with much sadness the trip was cancelled for 2009.
In GOLD anything can happen! The projects travel to unstable and sometimes dangerous countries that are in need of our help and this always carries a potential risk. We had been told time and time again that anything can happen in GOLD, and unfortunately it happened to us. However, after more telephone conferences GOLD team Honduras 2009 was reformed to GOLD team Honduras 2010!
So we packed up our many many hours worth work of project plans and shewees and suncream away and put it all to bed for a year in the hope that the situation would look a lot better in 2010...

Third briefing

Our third and (what we thought was) final briefing weekend happened in June. Unlike the previous weekends, we organised this entirely by ourselves and luckily Emma was happy to host five lodgers for a very sunny weekend in London.
We received our first few pieces of team uniform including the infamous Honduras pants (thank you Carrie) and official GOLD shirts. We took a picnic to the local park and started practicing correct condom techniques (whilst receiving several funny looks!) in the sun.
As well as doing more formal preparation for the project we also had a team night out including a mexican meal out and bowling

Second briefing

Our second briefing weekend was held just outside of London at the Gilwell Park Scout Activity Centre in early April.
We developed our own leadership skills, took part in relevant workshops (i.e. self esteem, sexual health) and ice breaking energisers with some team bonding exercise thrown into the mix including an interesting dance competition. Team Honduras displayed their newly acquired Ceroc dancing skills to Lady Gaga's Poker Face.

First briefing

Our first briefing weekend was held at the Sir John Lowther Centre in Kettering from 13th to 15th February. This meant that Valentine's Day was a boy-free zone!

This was our first opportunity to start bonding as a team and meet our leader Emma who greeted us with smiles and a goodie bag!
All seven GOLD 2009 teams were at the weekend (Armenia, Chile, Egypt, Fiji, Russia, Tanzania and Honduras) which allowed us to catch up with friends made at INTOPS back in October.

INTOPS 2008

Back in October 2008 approximately 60 members of GirlguidingUK attended the annual INTOPS weekend at the Miskin Mill Scout Village, Cardiff.

After possibly the longest 48 hours of our lives so far, we all returned to our normal lives hoping that we would be lucky enough to be selected for a GOLD project in 2009.
Approximately 3 weeks later we received letters in the post from Charlotte Makanga (GOLD Coordinator) saying that we had been offered a place in the group travelling to Honduras!