Leadership training and new challenges in Phnom Penh

Day six of the project and we have completed our first section of training - leadership development at HQ in Phnom Penh. 

Thursday and Friday were spent working with 15 young leaders on the topics of roles and responsibilities of leadership; problem solving; working in patrols, as well as sessions on UK culture, world guiding and craft and game ideas for the girls to take back to their units.

 

Although the girls were initially quite quiet with only a few speaking out in English, the sessions were a resounding success - by Friday the group were enthusiastic when they arrived and even the quietest were making their best efforts to speak and write in English, throwing themselves into all the activities we had prepared, and also teaching us games and songs of their own.  Games and team building challenges went down a storm, though we're slightly disappointed (and frankly unsurprised) to say that the Cambodian guides defeated us in almost every contest!

 
This series of sessions were hugely fun and rewarding for us all, especially after months of GOLD prep and build-up.  There were some anticipated translation mishaps and we tried to work on initial stumbling-blocks as the training progressed by speaking slower and explaining activities more clearly.


Buzzing from our successful trainings we were in for more fun yesterday evening, when Sochivanny, acting Chief Commissioner here, took us out to see some of the city by tuk tuk, ending with dinner and elephant patterned harem pant shopping at the Phnom Penh night market.  We were pleasantly surprised with the street snacks, perhaps with the exception of barbecued chicken tails (not what we thought we had purchased!).

This morning was our final training day at HQ, working on fundraising and PR with GGAC staff and committee members.  This was a slightly different group to that which we had expected, so it was a bit of a challenge to step the training up a gear, but generally the session was well-received and we were pleased with the opportunity to work with a different audience.

 

Thus that concludes phase one of the project here - it's hard to believe that we're almost a week through, time is certainly flying!  We'll leave you for now with happy thoughts from our 'friendship pond'!
 

Planes, trains and tuk tuks

We're here!  After what seemed like an eternity traversing London by tube and the skies by plane we arrived in Phnom Penh last night, greeted at the airport by our Cambodian guiding hosts.

The journey began on Sunday, a day before flying out, when we met up at Kirsty's for last minute preparations: dividing up resources, triple-checking passports and repacking rucksacks. Monday afternoon we battled our way across London to Heathrow, taking over most of a tube carriage in the process. After dining at the airport we set off, flying Qatar Airways (excellent service) via Doha (unbelievably hot considering we arrived at 5am), with an unexpected pit-stop in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (a splendid hour spent with the cleaning crew on the plane). 

We arrived on time in Phnom Penh, managed to acquire visas with no problems and were met by our wonderful hosts who took us to our accommodation for the next while - the Cambodian Guides Association HQ.  Headquarters are great - a lovely building, a huge  room for us to stay in, and even some cooling fans!  We're feeling the heat - hopefully we'll acclimatise soon.


By midday on our first day in country here's what's happening:

Jenny, Libby and Heather headed out to the supermarket with one of the guiding volunteers to buy some lunch and dinner supplies as well as plenty of water. Our first ride on a tuk tuk - thrilling if a little terrifying!
Kirsty, Sarah and Becca met with some of the guiding staff to plan ahead for the coming week, discussing some training plans. Everything seems to be shaping up well.

So all's grand so far. We're really excited to finally be in Cambodia, and can't wait to meet the leaders we'll be working with and get started on some leadership trainings this week!

GOLD love from Phnom Penh :)

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!