Chief Commissioner's Message Hi Everybody
the conference.
Welcome to another edition of the Guider's Link and can you believe it's the Christmas edition, where did that year go to? At this stage you are all well settled back into Guides and I hope you are enjoying working with your various Sections, Units, Regions and of course those of you who work at National level.
The strategic team have been meeting and by the time you are reading this will have presented the new Strategic Plan to the residential meeting of the National Executive Board and we will soon be rolling it out to all of you. We are starting to work on our Implementation Plan and you will start to see this being reflected in your Regions. Many thanks to the strategic team for all of their work.
I always get a thrill when I go back to Guides in September, that anticipation, will they all come back, will we have new members, will they still be as excited as they were going home from summer camp and full of enthusiasm for the coming year. Thankfully they were all of those things and that makes me very proud to be a Guider in this fabulous organisation of ours. So, since the last edition I and a lot of Guiders have been very busy and these are a few of the highlights of the work that is going on in the background to keep the wheels of CGI moving so well. I was delighted to travel along with Suzanne, Michelle and Trish to the 16th European Guide and Scout conference in Croatia this year. We were part of the CIGA delegation along with Jenna, Jenny, Amanda and Dara from IGG. We were then joined by representation from Scouting Ireland as part of the full Irish delegation to the joint conference. I was very happy to see how well Ireland is thought of on the European Guiding scene and the important part we play in European Guiding. It was great to meet people I had met in Prague last year and I look forward to seeing them again in Uganda next year at the World Conference. You will see the full conference report elsewhere in the Guider's Link but I will tell you about the fun bits. Some of the most common comments from the conference were “it's so hot” 38 degrees during the day and no less than 27 at night time, and no AC, the things we do for Guiding. “it's touching me" -again a reference to the heat and our clothes and “Do they not know who we are?"– a reflection of our own self-importance and our ability to laugh at ourselves. But the most important thing is we laughed and enjoyed ourselves, thank you so much to Suz, Trish and Michelle for the laughs and support. Conference is hard work but so interesting, the different things that are so important to other Guiding associations, our carbon foot print, the impact that Guiding has on the life of young women, sustainability, all so important and maybe things we need to put more importance on. During the various roll calls it struck me that countries that we normally only hear of in the news with war and death are carrying on the normal activity of Guiding and Scouting. Israel and Syria being two of those countries, so good to hear this and to have them in attendance at
A fabulous experience and once again I would encourage everyone to apply for international opportunities
Well done to the joint Guide and Scout committee in Cork on another very successful Ventact. Great to see our Rangers taking part in this event. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it down this year but look forward to next year's Ventact. I’m looking forward to seeing our Rangers in Castle Saunderson at the National Ranger Weekend and hope to see Rangers there from all over the country. When you are reading this, we will be well into the interviews for the Chief Commissioner awards, I am looking forward to meeting all the girls and to finding out how they took on and hopefully enjoyed the award. Well done to them all for deciding to do the award and to their Guiders for supporting them in the pursuit of this award. Don’t forget, as well as the CCA there is the Oisin Award and this is a fabulous award for our Ranger and Storrow age group. Did any of you use the GAB -Guides Against Bullying resource? We would love to hear about it and any recommendations or ideas you might have for the resource. Many thanks to all the NEB members who attended the residential board in September. We covered a colossal amount of work and you should have heard all about it at Regional level. The world we live in is changing and CGI needs to change in line with the changes, we are looking at our Governance, the way our Regions are run and the role of people on the Board to mention but a few items we covered. Exciting times ahead for all of us and we hope you are all looking forward to joining us on this journey. So just to finish best wishes to you and all your families for a Happy, peaceful Christmas and a Healthy and exciting New year. I look forward to seeing you at many events over the coming months. Yours in Guiding, Emily McCann Chief Commissioner chiefcommissioner@girlguidesireland.ie
www.girlguidesireland.ie 3