Be You Challenge!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a Badge Nut. I am the Guider who wants to get her girls earning as many challenges and badges as possible. I think its so fun to try new things and I love when I can explore a great challenge that will align with our Brownie Programming. Thats why I was SO excited that Girl Guides of Canada has released a new National Challenge that happened to coincide with the year we are doing out Key to Me in Brownies.

Introducing the Girl Guides of Canada Be You! Challenge!

This challenge, created by a partnership with NEDIC (National Eating Disorder Information Center) focuses on being yourself, boosting self esteem and breaking down gender stereotypes and bias.

The girls completed a variety of activities that helped them explore work/life balance, the power of words (both positive and negative) and looking at ways to boost other people's self esteem.

The girls favourite activity of this challenge was called self esteem trees. Each of the girls was given a cardboard tree and a stack of paper leaves. After they had written their name on their tree they went around the room and wrote a positive word, thought or memory about each of their Brownie friends and leaders. They wrote these positive words, one per leaf and then left the leaves on a pile next to that person's tree.

Once they were done writing their positive words the girls returned to their own tree and got to see the positive things the others in the group thought about them. They then got to glue these leaves to their tree.

During this activity you could hear a pin drop. My girls were so focused and did an amazing job making sure that everyone knew how important and special each member of our group is. After the trees were made we talked to the girls about how experiences at school or extra activities can sometimes leave us feeling bad about ourselves. We discussed how if/when you are feeling bad or thinking negatively about yourself that its important to shift your thinking by doing something positive, meeting up with friends or finding ways to combat the problem. We all decided that we could display our trees somewhere at home, like in their bedrooms where they could look at them each day and see how special they are. It was a great activity and a nice reminder to all the girls that Brownies is a safe place for all and everyone truly belongs.