Grant to Girlguiding UK Essex North East (360G-EssexCF-A478882)
Funding Organization
£500
Recipient Organization
To provide learning and development opportunities for girls and young women living in North East Essex.
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Grant Details
| Amount Applied For | 0 |
| Amount Awarded | 500 |
| Award Date | 2018-04-19T00:00:00+00:00 |
| Beneficiary Location: Country Code | GB |
| Grant Programme: Code | 2017/18 |
| Grant Programme: Title | EWAG Charitable Fund |
| Impact Category | Improve life skills, education, employability and enterprise |
| Last Modified | 2021-04-29T00:00:00+00:00 |
| Primary age group | Young People (13 – 18) |
| Primary beneficiary | Children and Young People |
| Primary issue | Education, learning and training |
| Recipient Org: Charity Number | 1050688 |
| Recipient Org: Description | As our website states, Girlguiding Essex North East enables girls and women to experience the excitement of new challenges, the value of friendship and the opportunity to be part of our inclusive and progressive County. We provide a range of age-appropriate non-formal education programmes, across all of the north-east of the geographical County - which includes opportunities for older girls to travel abroad, to meet Guides and Scouts from around the world and to immerse themselves in different cultures and locales. The County's International Team, which I lead, in addition to visits to individual units, to talk about international matters, generally aims to provide three fun days, each year, at which girls between the ages of 5 and 14 have a chance to try their hand at arts, crafts, activities and food from foreign countries and two overseas trips: one, within Europe, for girls aged about 13-15 and one, further afield, and incorporating a community service project, of some kind, for those aged roughly 14-18. The girls are selected to take part and are expected to fundraise most, if not all, of the cost of their trip. For many girls, such an event will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience - but one which will have a very profound effect upon them. I can think of the retired leader, now in her mid-80s, who has been lifelong friends with he Dutch guide she met at one of the first big European jamborees, after the War; the young woman who decided to read engineering, rather than modern languages, at university, after being inspired by a Finnish leader, who talked of her career in a male-dominated area, or the girls who get to understand what poverty really means and how so much can be achieved, with so little, having spent time volunteering in an Asian slum, or an African village. Some of the girls will be inspired to become leaders, themselves, and to offer similar opportunities to other girls, in due course. Our 2017 long-haul trip is to India. The group, of 18 girls, aged 13-18 and 4 leaders will begin with a training event at Sangam, one of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts' World Centres, in Pune, where they will learn not only about Indian life and culture and World Guiding, but also leadership and advocacy skills, which will enable them to speak out for others, for the rest of their lives. The event will include such team-building activities as a day-long hike through a jungle area and will incorporate a 4--day service project, working with a local charity, of each girl's choosing. While we do not yet have details of the specific projects on offer, this time, Sangam usually aims to provide a selection, to appeal to different preferences. By way of example, when we took a group out in 2013, the options included working with pre-school children, in a slum setting; working with teachers to produce teaching aids for primary school children, learning English; teaching women crafts which they could use to generate an income for their families and working with the rag-pickers (the people who collect, sort and recycle India's rubbish), to speak to wealthy women (to whom the rag-pickers felt unable to speak, directly), to try to persuade them to buy special paper bags, for the disposal of sanitary products. The rag-pickers had begun to make these: not for the small amount of additional income generated for themselves, but because the bags would enable them to avoid the risks posed by such hazardous waste. The girls who worked with the rag-pickers had been completely unsighted on the life these people led, or the fact they were regarded as so lowly, that they were, effectively, invisible to the majority of their society - and, having learned of their plight, were fiercely determined to do all they could, to help them, with their project. After Sangam, the group sets off travelling - but not merely to the tourist areas of the Golden Triangle. We will be undertaking a walking tour of the Dharavi slum, in the heart of Mumbai (the setting of "Slumdog Millionnaire"), which, despite its appalling conditions, is a veritable hive of industry, enterprise and ingenuity. We will have lunch at Sheroes, a cafe set up and run by women who have survived acid attacks and have a chance to talk to them about their lives. We will spend time at a sanctuary for elephants rescued from bad working conditions and on a nature reserve, where the girls will learn of the environmental threats faced by India, some of which are worldwide, but others, more localised. We will experience the spiritual side of India, with time spent in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges. Our aim, within the International Team, is for our girls to learn to be travellers, rather than tourists. We do not want them simply to compare and judge everything against their own lives, but to learn to value diversity, while, at the same time, recognising practices which disregard the basic human rights to which everyone should be entitled, whether at home, or abroad - and we want them to be able to speak out and to spread the word. One of the girls who visited India with me, in 2013, held an audience of some 500 spellbound, reducing many to tears, as she spoke of her initial fear of the unknown, thinking of visiting Dharavi, but how inspirational and empowering she had found the actual experience of understanding that the slum was infinitely more than the overcrowded squalor, which most outsiders are unable to see past. She is one of many girls who continue to raise money for their Indian charity, long after they return to the UK. |
| Recipient Org: Web Address | http://www.girlguidingessexne.org.uk |