The 5 'P's: Proper Preparation Prepares Peachy Project!

So, it’s two weeks to the day until we fly to Cambodia.  Recent weeks have been spent finalising training and teaching plans as well as talking kit and travel - the culmination of months of preparation and anticipation for GOLD.  Here’s a brief overview of our journey so far.

Selection took place in September at INTOPS, a weekend designed to open up international opportunities to guiding members.  Having received our selection letters sometime in November, we didn’t meet as a team until January at first briefing, alongside the other seven GOLD teams for 2013.  

The weekend provided an intro to both international travel and the aims of GOLD, and served as a good opportunity for team mates to get to know each other.  We picked out team kit, settled on a design for our fundraising challenge badge and established our roles within the group.  In keeping with guiding custom there was plenty of nonsensical entertainment to accompany the business at hand. Sadly, despite a valiant effort, team Cambodia, resplendent in green, finished a sorry 7^th in the Saturday evening quiz.  

Intermittent phone conferences and Facebook planning tided us over until second briefing in late April.  The focus of this weekend was more project-specific, with sessions delivered on teaching English as a foreign language, running effective leadership trainings and in-country practicalities including working with an interpreter. This was a useful insight for Cambodia where we will be working with interpreters throughout. 

Events took an interesting turn on Saturday evening when costumes were donned and team Cambodia transformed into the Spice Girls reincarnated, enhanced by the addition of ‘GOLD Spice’. We soon had everyone on their feet learning our moves.  We might yet have a future as a '90s tribute act.

The third and final team meeting before embarking was in mid-June, this time at Rebecca’s in Leeds. Unlike previous briefings we were flying solo as team Cambodia, granting us more time to focus on specific session planning for the project. We planned English language lessons, brainstormed leadership trainings for the first week in Phnom Penh, drew together a resource list, and Jenny and Kirsty succeeded in opening a team bank account...if that isn’t a success in itself we don’t know what is!

Three successful weekends, several (sometimes trans-Atlantic) phone conferences, countless e-mails and one Facebook page later and the team are pretty much good to go. It’s hard to believe we fly out within a matter of weeks; the journey has rocketed so far and no doubt our three weeks in Cambodia will whizz by even quicker!  What can we say?  Cambodia 2013, bring it on!