On November 28th, twenty girls from the Kapan region attended a Girl Scout Leadership and Team Building Seminar. The girl scouts had the opportunity to build their leadership skills through team work and cooperation and with one another. Peace Corps volunteers Mari Chiba and Brian Luke attended the event as visiting leaders. Their experience with GLOW Camp was a valuable asset to the seminar, and the girls enjoyed meeting new volunteers from Syunik Marz.
The girls completed several activities in two and a half hour session. One was to see if they could all get every teammate into a lifeboat which was clearly only built for 10. At first only about half of the girls fit, but after many trials and tribulations, they came up with the idea of putting just 1 foot on the sheet and holding onto each other to keep their boat afloat. The boat was rocking, however no one fell.
Another activity to promote team work began with the girls forming a single line, side by side. A balloon was positioned in between each girl at waist level. The object is for the whole line to walk forwards with none of the balloons falling to the ground. In the end the girls decided to take baby steps and remain close to one another. The line did eventually move a few feet.
The final activity of the seminar was to build a tower using team work and creativity. This activity had the girls utilizing strategic planning methods as a large group. The girls were divided into two teams, and each team was given a box with similar items. The girls had to decide how much time they would need to complete the project, draw a model of their tower including measurements, and then construct the tower within the allotted amount of time. Many of the girls don’t have frequent opportunities to utilize these skills. The groups were in two different rooms, but amazingly the final towers were about the same height, despite the fact that one group choose 10 minutes and the other 20 minutes to work on this project.The Kapan Girl Scouts have been meeting weekly with Peace Corps volunteers Andrea Trowbridge and Barbara Colson since September of 2009. The girls come from different schools all over Kapan. It is the volunteers’ hope that the girls will become strong leaders in their community and make lasting friendships.
