Thinking back to July, I had no idea what to expect of the
week ahead of me as I flew to Chicago with Issi, and
Helen. All I had known beforehand was that I was going to be hearing from speakers about, and discussing,
the UN’s Millennium Development Goals 1, 3 and 7 –poverty, gender equality and
sustainability. There were to be 300
girls, with two delegates from over 90 countries and each of the US Girl Scout
Councils, each creating their own Take Action Plans for their home communities.
When I got there, I found that the
whole event was planned and run by girls the same age as the attendees, 14-18,
so they really understood what we would relate to. They picked truly inspiring speakers,
relevant to the kind of change we could make, from Sejal Hathi, who founded the
international NGO Girls Helping Girls whilst still in high school, to Dr.
Tererai Trent, a Zimbabwean girl who never stopped hoping and went from having
no education at all to earning a PhD. They
also led most of the sessions on the causes and possible solutions to the
issues we discussed, giving the whole Forum a ‘girl-led’ atmosphere, which made
us feel like we really could make a difference.
We spent most of the sessions in patrols, which meant that we became
really close with the rest of our patrol and got the chance to learn about the
issues we were discussing in the context of each other’s cultures. Thanks to my patrol, I now have great friends
from the US, the Philippines, Germany, Rwanda and the Caribbean. The socials were a great chance to make
friends with girls from all over the world and to just have fun together! My favourite evenings included each country’s
traditional dress and performances at International Night, testing out my
French running round Chicago on a scavenger hunt with the Francophone African
girls and sumo-wrestling and sharing dance moves from around the world at the party on the last
night.
I was amazed to see what brilliant
work Guiding is doing in so many different countries, and it’s made me really
passionate to tell as many people as I can about the wonderful sisterhood we
are a part of. As one of the
chaperones said to me, taking the ‘elevator’ will never be the same again after travelling up 46 floors with girls from Pakistan, Malaysia, Peru, Finland,
Canada, Togo and New Zealand all at the same time. It is really hard to describe the unique
experience of being part of this international community, but the thing that
struck me the most was not the interesting cultural differences between us, but
how similar we all were.
The issue that I felt was most
relevant to girls in the UK is the lack of female participation in Politics –
currently only 22% of our MPs are women, compared with 56% in Rwanda. This is something we want to raise awareness
of and begin change. So the ‘Take Action Project’ that Issi and I
are working on is creating a badge that encourages girls at all stages of
Guiding to gain a greater understanding of and start to get involved with political
issues.
