Thinking About
World Thinking
Day
³Each year on February 22,
girls participate in activities, games and projects with global themes to honor
their sister Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in other countries.
There are LOTS of internet sites that can assist with your World Thinking Day plans. Iıve compiled a selection for you below along.
World Thinking Day Theme
³The
theme for World
Thinking Day 2009 is girls worldwide say we can stop the spread of AIDS,
malaria and other diseases.²
The following resources are available to assist girls in planning activities
around this theme:
World Thinking Day Countries
³This year, girls voted and selected Costa Rica, Fiji, Ireland, Jordan and Kenya to represent the five regions of World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS)Western Hemisphere, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Arab region and Africa. See the 2009 World Thinking Day Country Resources (pdf). World Thinking Day not only gives girls a chance to celebrate international friendships, but it is also a reminder that Girl Scouts of the USA is part of a global communityone of nearly 150 countries with Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.²
"World
Thinking Day was first created in 1926 at the fourth Girl Guide/Girl Scout
International Conference... Conference attendees decided that there should be a
special day when Girl Scouts and Girl Guides all around the world think of each
other and give thanks and appreciation to their sister Girl Scouts. The
delegates chose February 22 as the date for Thinking Day because it was the
mutual birthday of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement, and
his wife Olave, who served as World Chief Guide." (Read the last Thinking
Day Message from Olave.)
Find
out what Girl Guiding means
to girls in other countries, learn about the four World
Centers, and play the World
Centre Jeopardy game. Discover what we all have in common, our Symbols
of Unity (pdf), sing The
World Song (melody
MP3) and play the Word Wizardry Game (author unknown):
In most parts of the world
what we think of as Girl Scouts is called Girl Guides. Girls can change the
word ³Scout² into ³Guide² by playing the below game where one letter is changed
at a time to make words that fit the definitions.
SCOUT - Start
SHOUT - 1. To call loudly
SHOOT - 2. You could do this with
a gun
SHOOK - 3. What did the wind do to
the trees
SHOCK - 4. An electrical outlet
can give you this
STOCK - 5. Buy this from a broker
for an investment.
STICK - 6. A dry one is more useful for lighting a
fire
SLICK - 7. Slippery
SLICE - 8. A piece of cake, perhaps
SLIDE - 9. The best ones are tall and splash you
into the water
GLIDE - 10. To move gracefully
across the ice
GUIDE - Finish
World
Thinking Day is a great time to present your girls with their World
Badge, if you have not already done so. This pin is not an earned
recognition - all Girl Scouts and Girl Guides may wear the World Badge
(formally called the World Trefoil Pin and the World Association Pin) as a
symbol of their membership in this international organization.
Plan
a special ceremony, read
the World Trefoil Pin poem, and sing The
World Song (melody
MP3). Print out a picture of the World
Association Pin and the World
Association Flag for the girls to color and learn
what each part symbolizes. They might also enjoy playing World
Flag Bingo, World
Flag Cootie, or doing the World Flag Skit.
WAGGGS
encourages girls to ³turn your fundraising thoughts into action, enabling the
World Association to give educational and development opportunities to girls
and young women like you in other countries.² WAGGGS
provides a World
Thinking Day Fundraising Guide to help your troop raise funds for this
cause. Additional fundraising
resources may be downloaded from the World Thinking Day Website including:
stickers, leaflets, posters, and Coins With Care cards.
Girl
Scout contributions through the GSUSA Juliette
Low World Friendship Fund support this cause (38˘ of each $1 went to WAGGGS
in 2007). Girls are ³encouraged to contribute one dollar to the Juliette Low
World Friendship Fund on World Thinking Day. Each dollar helps make it possible
for girls and young women in the United States to connect with their
counterparts in other countries. Last year, nearly 200 Girl Scouts received
travel scholarships to participate in international events.² Download JLWFF
postcards (pdf) to assist with your collection. Your Girls might enjoy
doing one of the Juliette
Low Action Games or Thinking Day
Audience Participation Skit to help them understand this program and the
history of our organization.
Only a few councils (out
of over 300) meet GSUSAıs fundraising challenge each year. Maybe youıd like to
challenge your girls to locally beat GSUSAıs goal by publicizing the Juliette
Low World Friendship Fund within your service unit. If your girls get really involved, you could make
up some colorful World Friendship Knots to present to them (see details below),
purchase Friendship
Knot pins, or earn the Dimes
For Daisy (pdf) patch from GS of
Silver Sage Council in Idaho (contact them first for permission and
ordering information).
More suggestions on how to
encourage donations for this cause:
·
³World Chief Guide, Olave
Baden-Powell, wrote a letter in 1932 encouraging the first girl guides and girl
scouts to Send a penny with your thoughtsı on Thinking Day. You can continue
this tradition by using our specially designed Coins
With Care card
(internet archive). Download the sheet and stick your small change coins into
the spaces provided on the weeks running up to World Thinking Day.²
Our Rights, Our Responsibilities
³Every three to
six years, WAGGGS adopts a theme under which Member Organizations, troops
and individual members throughout the world can organize projects and implement
non-formal education.² Since 2002, WAGGGS members everywhere have been called
to action by the theme Our
Rights, Our Responsibilities. Through this theme, WAGGGS aimed to ³achieve
global impact in fulfilling its Mission, which is: to enable girls and
young women to develop their fullest potential as responsible citizens of the
world.² (This theme is being replaced with the one listed below in 2009).
An Our
Rights, Our Responsibilities patch program is available for Junior GS.
Activities on this theme may be incorporated into your World Thinking Day
program as your girls focus on others around the world.
³At
the 33rd WAGGGS World Conference in 2008, WAGGGS announced its new Global Action
Theme (GAT) girls worldwide say ³together we can change our world,² which
focuses on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The GAT will replace Our
Rights, Our Responsibilities as the WAGGGS theme from 2009 onwards.² (Resource
materials are expected to become available in April 2009)
There
have been many ceremonies written to make Thinking Day more meaningful:
The
below websites provide resources to help your girls learn more about Girl
Scouts and Girl Guides in other member countries around the world:
And,
here are additional resource links to help girls learn more about the culture
of the country they have chosen to study for Thinking Day:
Cut and Color
Iıve compiled a number of paper
doll, coloring pages, and crafts for you below that your girls might enjoy.
The World
Friendship Knot ³symbolizes the ties which bind the girls and adults who
belong to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and is a sign of
the continuous friendships they share. The four ends of the knot represent the
Promise, the Law, the Motto and Service to others. The four squares stand for
the four world centers.² (Directions are bit complex for our younger girls, so
they might prefer to make a World
Friendship Tie instead.)
Each
program level has a variety of awards that could tie-in with your activities
leading up to World Thinking Day. Leaders are reminded that most girls will be
celebrating three Thinking Days at their current program level (except Daisies,
of course). You may want to pace
yourself so that some of these awards are left for the following years. Below
are some to choose from:
This yearıs World Thinking
Day Patch is available at the council shop. If interested in any of the below
Council-Own programs, please contact the council listed to request permission
and to obtain ordering information.
Your girls might enjoy
learning about Girl Guide traditions in the UK by doing activities from the UK Brownie Traditions
Badge for ages 7-10 (click the 4th badge in the top row) or the UK Traditions of Guiding
Badge for ages 10-14/15 (click the 3rd badge in the
next-to-the-last row). If interested in actually obtaining a badge from the UK,
consider joining the Guides Badges for
Thinking Day yahoo group that has been formed for just this purpose.
Patch Work
Designs Historically Speaking patches are available for girls studying 25
different countries. The optional program manual includes a variety of crafts,
festivals, recipes, songs, traditional clothing paper dolls, maps, games and
answers to each requirement. This company also has Story Building Doll
Patches for the countries of Egypt, Mexico, Japan and England. A Thinking
Day Instructional Booklet available to guide planning of your World
Thinking Day event.
Debbie
in Ohio suggests a way to tie Thinking Day to Womenıs History Month, which
begins 10 days later. (Visit my HERstory page for resource links on this theme):
I think it would
be a wonderful thing for each of the Troops who participate in Thinking Day to
learn about a woman from history from the country that they are representing for
Thinking Day - Also just think what would happen if that distinguished woman
turned out to, at one time, be a Girl Scout/Girl Guide!! I really feel strongly
about the girls learning about women from history because it think it is one
step in teaching them an important lesson in self-esteem, working hard, etc. .
.
Go for the Gold
Denise
shares an interesting twist to the traditional Thinking Day event scheme below.
Follow Olympic tradition and start your event off with a Parade of Nations.
How about combining GSUSAıs GirlSports
initiative and Thinking Day to learn about Girl Scouts/Girl Guides around the
world in a different way? Instead
of focusing on foods and crafts from the different countries (what our Service
Unit events generally do), you could create a wide game that troops/groups
rotate through which shares sports and active childrenıs games from different
regions of the world. Troops could
sponsor stations or it could be organized/led by Program Aides, Cadette/Senior
Scouts, or by a Service Unit committee.
Girls could learn about different sports/games that children play around
the world, and hopefully have a way to try some aspect of each sport at the
event.
For example, you might teach a Russian
folk dance and tie it into the movements and music in ice dancing, have a
station for playing team ³floor hockey² or for curling with a soft bean bag,
have them make or decorate a simple ³bobsled² and race it down a track,
etc. You could highlight foreign
athletes that excel at their sport, so that girls watching the Olympics look
beyond their own countryıs ³medal count² in cheering for athletes. In addition you could share a map of
each highlighted country along with an example of their Scout/Guide uniform,
pins, promise and law. You should
be able to find lots of childrenıs games ideas through your councilıs printed
resources, and sports resources through program level badge books and the GSUSA
GirlSports materials.
State Fair
Some
groups have shared that they selected to study the diverse regions of our own
country as a variation of the traditional World Thinking Day event. Each troop
chose a state instead of a country. Although not strictly following the intent
of the occasion, this is an option some may like to choose. Girls could try State
Recipes, learn State Songs,
print out State Maps, and color State Flags.
Many
Girl Scout councils have
developed council-own patch programs to encourage girls to learn about their
state. (Some east coast options are listed on my Road Trip!
webpage.) In addition, Patch Work
Designsı has developed 25 state patch programs with manuals to assist in
learning about each area.
Get Connected
See
how Girl Guides around the world celebrated World Thinking Day
last year and read suggestions for World Thinking Day this
year. Then, send in you
own ideas. You can also send comments to our Western Hemisphere Region
website.
Chat
online with Girl Scouts and Girl Guides around the world on Scout Linkıs Trefoil Chat website. Thinking Day
Chats began in 1997 and for the past five years ³have had over 1500 chatters
from at least 15 countries participate. . . Leaders planning to have their
units join us are encouraged to join us for a regularly scheduled chat. . . to
familiarize yourself on how IRC chatting works prior to the World Thinking Day
chat.²
Guides On The Air
(Canada) and World
Thinking Day on the Air (UK) are opportunities for Girl Guides and Girl
Scouts to talk to other WAGGGS members all over the world via amateur radio on
the third full week each February. The Canadian program began in 1985 by CLARA,
the Canadian Ladies Amateur Radio Association.
Send
an e-card to Girl Guides and Girl Scouts far and wide through the following
sites:
Girl
Scout troops start signing up each fall to participate in the annual Thinking Day Postcard Exchange. Last
year there were almost 3,000 US Troops and over 1,000 International Units from
50 countries mailing postcards to each other. Choose a postcard that depicts
your area or send 2009
World Thinking Day Postcards, or World
Thinking Day 2009 postcards. Note - This program normally closes in early
February so that mailings can be made in time for World Thinking Day. Should
you have missed the cut-off, add this idea to your planning calendar next fall
so that your girls might plan ahead.
Girl
Scout and Girl Guides around the world enjoy the hobby of collecting. View some
international collections of patches
and pins and postage stamps
showing scout themes.
Girls
who are interested in learning more about our sisters nation-wide and abroad
might like to participate in one of the many Girl
Scout Exchanges as a follow-up to Thinking Day.
³USA
Girl Scouts Overseas serves American girls living overseas and girls
attending American or international schools. From Bahrain to Brazil, the
Philippines to Poland, and points in between, USA Girl Scouts Overseas serves
[approximately 18,000] girls [in 90 countries] who want to enjoy the same
excitement, fun, and adventures in Girl Scouting as their stateside Girl Scout
sisters.² Learn more about our sisters overseas through some of their websites such
as: USA Girl Scouts - West
Pacific, USA Girl Scouts - North
Atlantic, USA Girl Scouts - Kuwait,
and USA Girl Scouts - Kazakhstan
One way to vary your
groupıs annual celebration of World Thinking Day might be to focus on the
countries within our WAGGGS region. There are over 4 million girls in 36 countries within
our Western Hemisphere Region.
There is a Western
Hemisphere Region Pin and patch that may be
worn on the uniform. (Inquire at your Council Shop should you wish to order
these items, referencing the GSUSA item
numbers.)
³Each
year during Peace
Corps Week [Feb 23 Mar 2, 2009], former Volunteers take time to celebrate
the Peace Corpsı birthday by sharing their knowledge and experiences with their
communities in the United States.² Order a FREE
Third Goal Activity Kit for Peace Corps Week and find more Third Goal
Resources on their website. Check Peace
Match to see if there is someone in your area who worked in the country you
girls are studying for Thinking Day. Girls can learn more about this organization
at Peace Corps Kids World.
Additional program resources are available through the Peace Corpsı Worldwise Schools website, including
a special section on World Thinking Day.
The International
Society of Friendship and Good Will sponsors International Friendship Week
the last full week in February to build friendships through the use of the
one-world language, Esperanto.
Your girls might like to learn about the program and try out this language
during their cultural studies leading up to Thinking Day.
Updated February 2009