Peruvian Brownie Quest LiA Journey Weekend

I was thinking about this blog the other day, and I realized I should highlight my experiences as a troop leader more often.  I’ve shared what we’ve done as a service unit with our annual summer camp in previous posts, but I should step back from the big picture on occasion and show what’s going on in my world at the troop level.  I have to state for the record that this was best troop year I’ve experienced in my eight years as a leader.  We had a smaller troop this year, but we more than made up for it with activities, service projects, meetings, and trips.  I was very blessed to have a great set of co-leaders, parents, girls, and a very supportive service unit.  I’m going to share a couple of the highlights from this past year in future blog posts.  This one will feature the Peruvian Brownie Quest Journey LiA Weekend from this past January! 

Admittedly, I haven’t led many Journeys in my years as a volunteer.  We’ve done the Daisy 3 Cheers for Animals, Brownie Quest, and the Junior aMUSE.   Currently, we’re working on the Outdoor Journey with our Cadettes.  I attempted a Journey in a Weekend a few years ago but ended up having to cram the rest of it in between meetings before we started on the Bronze Award.  Like a lot of leaders, I’m not really a big fan of Journeys.  However, I recommend Brownie Quest to any Brownie leader out there – especially new ones.  In my opinion, it does a good job of teaching the three leadership keys – (everybody say it together!) Discover, Connect, and Take Action – to both girls and adults.  The girl’s book is a little cheesy and the story a little awkwardly worded in places.  But overall, I think it’s a good ‘un.

Starting last year, I started contemplating how our Cadettes were going to earn their Leader in Action award.  If you’re not familiar with the LiA, Cadettes have to assist and lead sessions of a Brownie Journey to earn it.  According to the Awards Log, it looks like Cadettes are supposed to pair up the Journey they’re working on with a specific Brownie one.  For example, BQ is matched up with aMAZE!  While certain Journeys on different levels may go hand in hand, attempting to do this is not practical for a lot of troops.  To make this happen, Cadettes would need to somehow find a Brownie troop that happens to be working on a Journey, and then they’d have to choose the corresponding Cadette Journey.  What if the Cadettes didn’t want to do that particular Journey?  Setting it up this way locks you into doing something that you wouldn’t necessarily have picked if you had the choice – and aren’t we all about girl led?  So – and I may get tsk tsk’d for this – our Cadettes led BQ without doing the aMAZE Journey.

We decided to knock out both a Journey and a LiA at one time by doing a Journey in a Weekend.  Like I did for aMUSE a few years ago, we purchased a Leadership Quest Journey Badge in a Bag from MakingFriends.com.  It really comes in a box, but I digress.  And in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t get a kickback for promoting it.  It worked beautifully for what and how we were going to run the weekend.

You’re probably wondering where the Peruvian thing comes into play.  We scheduled this Journey in a Weekend near the end of January.  And what’s in February?  Yes, World Thinking Day!  This year our troop chose Peru.  Why Peru?  Because llamas!  My Cadette co-leader and I were going over the calendar that previous November, and she pointed out that we were going to be crunched for time trying to get everything that needed to be done for our service unit’s Thinking Day event (which was the first Saturday in February) if we were going to do this right when cookie season started.  Yikes!  She suggested we do the bulk of the work during the Journey weekend since both the Cadettes and Brownies would be together at the same time (we meet on different days).  Yikes again!  Could we get an entire Journey, LiA, and Thinking Day prep done all in one weekend starting early Saturday afternoon and ending late Sunday morning?

We most assuredly did!  We knocked this Peruvian Brownie Quest Journey LiA Weekend out of the park!

Brownie Quest Journey!

Thinking Day prep!

We even fit in a G.I.R.L. activity!  In case you’ve lived under a rock, G.I.R.L. stands for Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, and Leaders™.  As an aside, if I had a dollar for every time I saw or heard Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, and Leaders™ at the National Convention in October, I could have retired by now.  Check out these G.I.R.L.s!  That stands for Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, and Leaders™!

And we even had time for a screening of The Emperor’s New Groove – because llamas!  Some of the Cadettes opted to work on the Thinking Day swaps and finish up the display board during this time.

After a pancake breakfast, we brought the Peruvian Brownie Quest LiA Journey Weekend to a close with the Brownies finishing up their last session and the Cadettes filling out their LiA paperwork.  And last but not least, we had the award presentation!

The girls all had a blast and we got EVERYTHING done.  EVERYTHING.  We even churned out 150 llama swaps:

It was a magical Girl Scout weekend, and I wish I could have bottled it up.  Everybody left with smiles.  These moments make all the frustrations and aggravations and tears and sweat worth it and remind us who we’re doing this for.  The G.I.R.L.s!  The Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, and Leaders™!

Addendum:  If you would like to do the G.I.R.L. (Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, and Leaders™) activity, you can download the letters here and the instructions as well.  I printed off the letters on 8.5 x 11″ cardstock, cut them to fit, and then laminated them for our troop’s personal use.  Our service unit printed them on larger cardstock at Office Depot and laminated them as well to use at events for decoration or for troops to check out.  We did the G.I.R.L. (did you know that stands for Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, and Leaders™?) activity at one of our SU leader meetings:

Llama Swap Instructions:  Download the llama cutout to the left, add the lettering, and then copy and paste numerous ones in a Word Doc or Publisher file.  We added the troop number and event name to the JPG before copying & pasting them in a Publisher file.  The ones we made were about 2″ x 2.5″.  Print them off on manila or light brown cardstock and cut them out, leaving plenty of space near the eyeball for a hole.  Cut and glue pieces of multi-color brown yarn along the llama’s back.  Glue a small googly eye for the eye.  Use a small holepunch near the eye (see picture above) and attach a safety pin.  Done!  I recommend tacky glue for the yarn and eyeball.