Young Leaders weekend 🏝🎣🏊‍♀️

August 21, 2022

18/8/22 ~ travel time ✈️

We had a lovely relaxing morning. We headed off to Villimale for a wonderful picnic breakfast with some great MGGA company. Isha, who has been arranging our project is flying back to university soon so it was a lovely chance to spend some quality time with her in the morning. Back to the association to pack for our flight to Kadhdhoo. The view of the islands from the plane were stunning 😍

Once we had landed in Kadhdhoo we had to take a speed boat to Thinadhoo island … that was a lot of fun! We were greeted by many Young Leaders and were soon settled in watching the sunset.

We we treated to a delightful dinner and our evening ended in the ‘museum park’ where a local band played some local classics using the boduberus (big drum!).

19/8/22 ~ Island hopping 🏝

Today was a very early start! We were up, dressed and by the door at 5:30 am as we were off for an adventure on an uninhabited island. As soon as we reached the island we enjoyed some wonderful breakfast which was swiftly followed by a tour of the island.

The Young Leaders introduced us to their version of dodgeball. This was lots of fun and Tas was a natural! We headed into the sea whilst the Young Leaders cooked lunch, once we had finished swimming we soon realised that we were nearly all very burnt 😩.

It was time to head back to Thinadhoo, but first things first… jumping off the boats into the sea! Our team was very brave and had lots of fun doing this. We also had a go at fishing. Many fish were caught including a shark (accidentally!) which was put safely straight back into the sea. We arrived back to Thinadhoo throughly exhausted from a wonderful day so headed to bed.

20/8/22 ~ Time for some training 📝

We were picked up at around 9:30am this morning and were taken out for breakfast.

Before we knew it, it was time for training! For these sessions we split into a couple of groups. Holly, Liv and Kara ran the morning session which focused on time management. Activities included ‘how long do you think 60 seconds is?’, thinking of barriers to time management and how these can be overcome and how many activities from the list can you complete in 10 minutes. All Young Leaders were engaged and enjoyed the session!

Before our afternoon session we enjoyed a bike tour of the Island.

In session 2 Tas, Gwen and Georgie worked with the Young Leaders on an environmental project they had been wanting to run. The Young Leaders had some incredible ideas so we brainstormed how they could fit together to form a whole project. They decided to focus on how they could improve the recycling of plastic bottles on the island given they use lots of bottles for drinking water. We then discussed how the Young Leaders could use their established fundraising ideas, along with some new ones, to raise the money needed to support establishing their project. By the end of the session the Young Leaders had come up with an action plan for getting their project off the ground and had planned how they could maintain the project long term. They also announced at the end that they had already made contact with the water companies during the session so that they could start building up the dialogue! We were in awe of their passion and enthusiasm for getting the project going!

The Guides then joined us for 40 mins to close the day doing a human knot, playing games and singing some songs, including new ones we have learnt over the past week.