Guias y Scouts Update

As many of you know I have been working for a very long time (almost a year) to form a Guias y Scouts group in my town. Guias y Scouts is the Costa Rican version of the boys and Girl scouts. I did not know this until I started, but the boys and girl scouts were actually started by a man named Biden Powell in England. He was a general in the English military and he started a boy scout group using some of his military background for the structure of the group. Shortly after he started the boy scouts his wife started a group for girls and that is where the girl scouts began. The program spread internationally and is now in 160 countries. Guias y Scouts has a different format from what you may remember, but it has the same foundation. Due to fewer resources in Costa Rica we have both boys and girls together and within one troop there maybe up to 4 different sub groups to help with organization as well as open it up to more kids. So, to get on to my group...

We will be having our official swearing in ceremony on August 29!!!! On this day the regional director of Guias y Scouts will come to La Palma and we will take our official oath and they will give us our leader/board of directors patch. I can't tell you how excited I am to wear my Guias y Scouts uniform and stand with my group as we are presented to the community. It will be a great day. The same day we will have activities for kids and we will begin signing kids up. I can't wait to see how it all goes and I know that we are going to have far more kids interested than we have leaders for, but, it will all even out after a while. I can't say enough about my board of directors group as well as my group of leaders. Over the past almost year I have really gotten to know them and am excited to see how they work together as a group (especially once I get out of the way). As a volunteer I'm always thinking and worrying about sustainability and with Guias y Scouts I feel confident that this will stick. So that's Guias y Scouts for now. As soon as I have pics from the swearing in I'll post them. At the moment my host mom is making me the uniform pants and one of the leaders is picking me up a shirt, I'll just need to sew on my patches! Who knew I'd be so excited about a uniform...