Running a skills builder day

This is my fifth blog now for Girlguiding Midlands and I’m not sure why, but for some reason I’ve been putting it off. I thought that for my Events experience pathway I would run a division event, but I’ve put off writing the blog for so long that I’m now in my third year of organising it. Regardless, I will give you a whistle-stop tour of my idea and how I went about planning and running it. You might even like to use it to help run your own division event!

 

The idea

As with lots of things we do in Guiding, my idea was initiated by concern for girls in my own unit. I had a Rainbow who had worked very hard at home on interest badges but, for various reasons, was not going to complete enough skills builders for her gold award.

 

“Hang on”, I thought. “Why don’t I organise an event to do a skills builder badge in a day”

(Shout out to Rayne Guides who have done a similar thing before and were my inspiration for this idea)

 

Before I knew it, my brain had run away with me.

“How great would it be to have an event accessible to the entire division, from Rainbows right through to Trefoil Guild” I found myself thinking.

 

And that is how it all began. My initial idea was:

• Rainbows come in the morning, do their skills builder activities and then have a picnic lunch before going home.
• Brownies arrive in time for a big picnic with the Rainbows and then do their skills builder activities.
• Guide and Ranger units would come either in the morning or afternoon to run the activities, giving girls a chance to practice their leadership skills.
• Leaders and Trefoil Guild would support the running of activities, supervise their units and prepare refreshments and so everything else they do so well.
• All Brownies and Rainbows would go home with a completed skills builder badge and Guides and Rangers would get a thank you badge for helping.

As you will find out through the progress of this blog, the end event looked a little different to this, but this was my initial idea, so this is where we will start.

 

Planning

My first job was to come up with a plan that I could pitch to units in my division. The first thing I did was choose a date and venue.

 

The venue – I know some people prefer not to use church halls for activities to encourage inclusion, however, on this occasion I felt it was a good option for us. I chose the hall for four main reasons. Firstly, it is in an area of deprivation within our division, making the day more accessible to those who may struggle with transport. Secondly, it has a good outdoor area, a large hall and a small hall indoors which meant I could split up activities which were noisy/messy/food related. Thirdly, it was wheelchair accessible, which was very important to me in order to include everyone in our division. Lastly, the price was affordable in comparison to similar venues in our area. Taking these factors into account, I went ahead and made a provisional booking for the day.

 

The date – Between the venue and my own commitments, I selected a date for the first weekend of the summer holidays. In hindsight (isn’t it a beautiful thing), this was not the best decision as lots of Rainbows, Brownies, or leaders were away. This year I changed the date to March and this boosted the numbers attending considerably.

 

So we had a date, we had a venue, but I still needed to be able to tell units how much it was going to cost before I could expect them to commit to coming. This brings us nicely onto…

The budgeting

“Ergh! Oh no!” I hear you cry “Not the boring money bit!”.

 

I know several leaders who find this the hardest part of organising an event, or could even be put off running an event altogether because of budgeting, but actually it was very simple. Here are some nice easy steps to get you started:

 

1. Decide what activities you want to do exactly. I chose to do live smart stage 1 for Rainbows and live smart stage 2 for Brownies and selected four activity cards from each. I also decided that I wanted to do refreshments in the middle of the morning and middle of the afternoon to split up the activities.
2. Make a list of every single thing you need for the day. I mean everything. Craft resources, drinks, biscuits. Do you want stickers to split the girls into groups? They need to go on the list. Glue sticks for a craft? On the list. I like to make sure that everything which is not completely reusable is included. Ok, it makes no difference if you take your own unit’s scissors along, but if you use their glue sticks and half are used up this is negatively impacting your unit. Instead I prefer to budget in to buy new ones for the event.
3. Once you have made your list, think about where you will buy the items and how much they cost. This will of course differ depending on where you live and how much time you have to go to different shops, but take a look at my Blue Peter style one I made earlier (figure 1). Please bear in mind that this is my list from this year and we had some resources such as stickers, tea and coffee left over from last year (and still in date) so I did not have to include these again.
4. To get a total, you will need to have a rough idea of how many people are likely to attend. I used the numbers we normally get at Brownies Revels and our Rainbow Christmas party to help me but erred on the side of less people coming, which turned out to be correct.
5. Calculate the price per person. You do this by adding together all of the costs and then dividing by the number of participants you expect. It might be worth trying this with a few different participant numbers as some costs remain the same regardless of how many or how few attend e.g. rent.
6. Decide whether this price is reasonable. The first year I decided the cost was too high so I applied for grants to cover the cost of the hall. This year I did not need to do this as we had some leftover resources from the previous year which kept our costs down.
7. Decide how much you are going to charge participants. I always like to charge slightly more than my budget suggests in case we have less participants or there are unexpected requirements e.g. gluten free biscuits. As you can see, my budget for this year suggested it would cost £4.63 per person, so I charged £5.

And that’s it. That’s all there is to budgeting for an event. Now you can move onto the more exciting things like getting people excited for your event and preparing the activities…

 

Inviting your participants

Now you have a vague plan for what is going to happen and how much it will cost, you need to let people know about it. I wrote consent forms relevant for Rainbows, Brownies and Guides and sent these to all the unit contacts.

 

From trial and error, I have found that for a day event, sending out information to units roughly two months in advance and asking for numbers one month before the event works well. It is tricky to weigh up how much time you need to buy badges and resources, but if you ask too far in advance I have found that people either forget or don’t want to commit.

 

Make sure you tell people when and where the event is, how much it costs, whether they need to wear uniform and what they need to bring with them as well as talking about all the exciting things you will be doing.

Most importantly – don’t forget to invite your own unit!

 

Some units may wish to attend but struggle to have enough adults to meet ratio. This is where the Trefoil Guild or leaders unattached to units can be a massive help, so make sure you keep them in mind.

 

The boring bits

Disclaimer: These may not be boring for everyone.

 

As well as getting excited about your event, planning activities and telling people about it, you also need to make sure that everything is safe. Here are some key things you will need to do:

• Complete a risk assessment and share it with the units attending. Make sure you have asked leaders if any participants have additional needs, allergies etc. so you can include these and you may need to visit the venue if you aren’t already familiar with it.
• Designate a first aider and make sure that the first aid kit is up to date. This could be you or someone else.
• Make sure all units, including your own, have enough adults to meet ratios.
• Collect your own consent forms in and organise a home contact for your unit – that’s the bit I always forget until the last minute.
• Organise who is going to run each activity. I made a handy table on my spreadsheet (figure 2) and leaders from each unit chose which they would like to run.
• Keep a record of which units have told you they are attending. Guess what, I made another table in my spreadsheet (figure 3).

 

The final few bits

Ok, so you’ve sent out consent forms, written a risk assessment and planned all your activities. You’ve even sent emails to remind people that you need numbers in. Now the deadline day is here and you know how many people you’re working with.

 

For me this was a bit disappointing the first year. We had far fewer Rainbow (7) and Brownie (about 25) responses than anticipated and no Guide or Ranger units able to help out. It was obvious that the day as planned was no longer going to be viable. I had even contacted units in a nearby division with no luck. Instead of giving up, I replanned the day so that we all met together. Here is how we eventually worked the day (Figure 4):

We had four activities set up before the break (two for Rainbows and two for Brownies) then changed them to the other four activities for after a drink and biscuit. Last year this worked well, just splitting the Brownies and Rainbows in half, however this year it had to be adapted for higher numbers.

 

In the week leading up to the event I then had to buy all the things we needed, check that our hall booking was still expected, and run around borrowing a gazebo after panicking about the weather forecast (in the end it stayed in the boot of the car, unneeded).

 

I also (and this was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself) put the exact items and instructions needed for each activity into a carrier bag labeled with the activity name and what the bag contained. This meant it was really easy for leaders on the day to set up their activity, feeling confident that they’d got everything they needed and then easy for me to check I’d got everything back at the end.

 

The other thing I did was email everyone the day before to remind them of timings, the importance of bringing a packed lunch and recommendation for clothing to wear for the weather. The first year it was “remember to wear suncream”, this year it was “don’t forget your coat”!

 

Then the only thing left to do is get a good night’s sleep before the big day itself…

 

… or toss and turn, worrying about what you’ve forgotten!

 

The event

Finally, it’s the day of the event and everything is ready… you hope!

I double checked everything I had packed, loaded it into the car and made sure to get to the hall in good time. After meeting with the other leaders and setting the first activities up, we were ready to go. If I can, I like to not give myself any particular activities to run so that I can be floating and helping wherever it is needed. My main jobs were to make sure things kept moving on time, giving people warning when their activities were nearly over and ensuring everyone knew what they were doing next.

 

Although this may sound like a simple job, bear in mind I had a one year old just learning to walk with me all afternoon.

 

As the girls arrived we gathered in our units on the grass outside the hall for a picnic. This meant that the participants had something to do whilst waiting for everyone to arrive and also allowed members of different units to socialise as lots knew each other from school or previous events. Leaders from each unit were given stickers with coloured dots on to split the participants into groups and their badges to give out at the end.

 

Just before 1:15 we gathered in a circle and I explained the structure of the day before splitting off into groups for the first activity.

 

After two activities we gathered in a circle again for a drink and biscuit. This gave us a chance to change over the activities and a few minutes to relax and gather our thoughts.

 

At 2:30 we then split off to do the final two activities. An hour later I gave everyone a five minute warning for groups to begin tidying away and we gathered in a circle again. We took the opportunity to thank everyone who had been involved – leaders for bringing their units, trefoil guild for running activities etc, and award badges. We then finished by singing the Rainbow ending song and Brownies bells before splitting back into our units to make dismissal easier.

 

Generally, everything went smoothly, both the first year and this year, however, with all events there were some things that could be improved and here are some changes I made to improve the event:

• Provide colourings and puzzles – some of the activities will naturally take longer than others so having some things girls can do if their activity finishes early is really helpful.
• Leaving less time to tidy up – by getting each group of girls to help tidy the last activity they were doing, cleaning up is a very quick process and all that is left once the girls leave is a quick sweep round and check of the toilets and bins.

 

I always find that when I’m running an event I see all the bits that aren’t going quite right; the activity that has to be moved because of the rain, the one type of biscuit that runs out, or the 5 minutes a group were at a loose end. This means it is really important to listen to the feedback from other leaders, they will have a different, more objective – and often more positive! – view of how things went than you will be able to as the organiser. It’s also a good idea to look at the girls. Rainbows in particular normally show exactly how they feel and lots of smiling faces are a sure sign that they’ve had a good time.

 

Afterwards

Once the business of preparing for and running the day is over and the excitement has worn off it can feel a bit disappointing to get home and realise you’ve got 20 bags to unpack, consent forms to shred and your final claims to put in.

 

On the other hand, you can keep the enthusiasm going by choosing a date and theme for next year and letting everyone know (conveniently forgetting how much effort it all was) whilst also thanking them for attending this year!