Training with the Little Maids and Guides

14/08/2022 ~ Training day 1.

A 6:45 alarm so a bright and early start to the day. For todays sessions we had Little Maids and Guides. To all our U.K. Guiding sisters, Little Maids are ages 7-11 and Guides are 12-17. This morning we held our session at Ahmadiyya International School. We had approximately 80 Little Maids and the training session focused on ‘leadership, confidence and decision making’.

We started our training by leaving the school’s beautiful gallery and being greeted by 2 rows of Little Maids handing us individual white roses while we entered the hall. One Little Maid opened the session with an Islamic prayer.

The training started and the girls were a little quiet at first but very quickly started chatting and talking all about Guiding. We taught the girls the call and response “Is everybody happy?” They seemed to enjoy it and we found it to be a very helpful way to get their attention quickly. Our first activity was the human knot where we discovered that the activity works better in smaller groups but the girls enjoyed it and it was a good way to develop their team work and decision making.

Afterwards we moved forward to discussing in groups the qualities of a good leader and they then fed back to the entire group. Throughout the activity we would ask “Is everybody happy?” as a way of getting their attention. We followed with a quick energiser game “copy cat”.

We then moved on to token to talk where they had 3 tokens to talk about a particular topic and they would lose a token every time they contributed to the conversation. As a team we felt that this activity went well but wasn’t the best activity for the age group. After such an in depth activity we decided to have a fun one of “start the show” that seemed to be a great hit with the girls and most joined in happily, it went really well. We ended the session with a final evaluation and all the girls were super thankful and really enjoyed the sessions. We took loads of photos and went to have some short eats that consisted of roti, coconut bread, tuna meals chocolate brownies and a plethora of tasty fruit teas that we were then given some of our own due to the fact that we enjoyed them so much!

We arrived at Imaduddin School for our first ever Guides session. When we entered the bright orange room all of the Guides were sat on chairs and our helpful Guide chaperone instructed all of the girls to move the chair out of the way to make sure we had plenty of space to have some fun. To open the session, our Guide chaperone encouraged the girls to repeat after her and greet us in many different languages which included Dhivehi, Hindi, Japanese, German and French, just to name a few! We were then gifted with a lovely medal that had been crafted by the Guides.

It was then time to start our introduction which was lead by Kara followed by Tas trying to trick the girls with a game of “Have you seen or heard about Headly”. Gwen then led the girls to think critically about what makes a good leader with various activities that involved planning, facilitation and teamwork that included the human knot, 20 questions and cross the river.

Liv did a number of songs to get the energy up one being a crazy one called “Mother Nature“ the girls then showcased their confidence and led their own song which was great to see. Following this, Georgie made the Guides make decisions in token to talk. To get the girls moving one more time Liv taught them tea pot tag. It’s safe to say that they definitely needed a glass of water afterwards. Holly encouraged the girls debating skills in role model and Kara rounded everything up with the final evaluation.

When closing our session we were gifted with a lovely handmade lollipop stick basket with a personalised Polaroid and some Maldivian sand. We took a lot of photos with the girls and their leaders and said our goodbyes ready for some short eats. We had fresh fruit and various tuna snacks not forgetting the vegetarian option. Thanks a bunch Imaduddin School for having us!

We went out in the evening for dinner and all enjoyed some delicious food at Jazz Cafe!

15/08/2022 ~ Training day 2.

Today started with a second training session with the Little Maids, this time at Rehendhi School, where we were joined by approximately 80 Little Maids from across Male and Villimale. We were warmly welcomed with beautiful baskets of flowers.

We focused on increasing confidence, leadership and desision making skills again, with more human knots, more rounds of laughter with the activity ‘copy cat’ and more fantastic discussions from the Little Maids on what makes a good leader.

Today, instead of the activity ‘token to talk’, the Little Maids were off on a spaceship to the moon, with only space to pack 10 items. They had to talk between themselves to make some tough decisions about what items they would pack to survive. Those 10 items where then cut down to 5, and the little maids did a great job in deciding what they would take!

After the session finished, and lots and lots of photos were taken, we were taken for refreshments (of tuna buns, roti, sandwiches, cinnamon buns, eclairs and biscuits - yummy!), where we were able to relax and recharge before taking the bus to our next school for afternoon training with the Guides (via some local shops for Kara to try and change some of our team Maldivian rufiyaa for some smaller denominations)!

After leaving Rehendi school, we headed to the Huravee school via a double-decker bus. At the school we were greeted with coconuts to drink. The theme of this school was green!

Our afternoon session was with Guides. We had a group of about 55 - for which we mostly replicated the training for Guides from the day before. However, having reviewed the plan, we swapped out Token to Talk for packing for a trip to the moon, which encouraged decision-making. There was some excellent ingenuity during the crossing the river activity from all teams, who created water skis from their precious paper, and shuttled a few Guides across the river at a time, leading to them completing the activity in record time. The singing session consisted of different songs, such as Rare Bog and a favourite of many of the Guides - the one about a gorilla picking his nose! Seema, our MGGA guide for the day, also taught us a song about a frog with similar hand actions to Edelweiss.

The session was well-received by the Guides, and it was great to see them develop during the few hours we were with them.

The session ended with the GOLD team being presented with some beautiful hand painted pictures relating to a unique aspect of the Maldives. There were also lots of photos of course, and every Guide received a UK badge. We then were treated to some refreshments, including iced coffee, sausage rolls, pineapple upside down cake, and sandwiches.

This evening we were joined by many of our MGGA sisters as we enjoyed a lovely Indian at Acha’s Poppadums. India is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its independence, so the perfect cafe choice for this evening. We travelled home in style - riding on the back of moped!