GIRL GUIDES

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 22 September 1934, Page 13

GIRL GUIDES

NOTES BY “GUIDES” _____ WELL DONE, PATFJA! The annual report just published reveals the fact that a Guide in the Patea Company was enthusiastic enough to gain enough recruits for her company to form a new 'patrol. This is the true spirit of Guiding. The Gui(cle, who is un-tunned, has the stuff in her of a missionary. She is to be congratulated for her zeal, but she is probably the kind of girl who would be surprised if she received thanks. She has worked for the good of the Company, not for self.

HAPPINESS FOR INVALID GIRLS.

How m’any people. ;'are aware of the fact that the New Zealand Girl Guide Movement has long had a working scheme for the invalid gilds of our hospitals and private homes. It is called Post Guiding. Mrs Huntingdon, Head of Post Guides, gives the following details of the scheme by which invalid girls are brought into the great Girl Guiding game:— . Post guiding is no new thing; it is a game that has been played very successfully and happily by hundreds of crippled and invalid girls for more than ten years. This is how it is carried out in New Zealand : When a girl becomes a Post Guide —which means that, like Lone Guides, she does all her guiding work by post —she makes the same promise, carries out (so far as she is able) the same training, plays the same games, and lives up to the same ideals as other Guides. She cannot go to company meetings to learn things, but if there is an active company near where she lives they will “adopt” her. Some of the Guides will visit her and help her with her tests and be her friends in many ways. When she passes her tenderfoot she is enrolled, and then goes on to second-class tests (with of course, modifications, where ordinary tests are not physically possible). Of course, being a Guide is not just working for badges, as any Guide will tell you. To make up for the interesting things which other Guides do at their company meetings the Posts have a company meeting every month. This company meeting is in the form of a letter, and by this letter the Post .Guide has all the fun and interest of a regular meeting. The letters contain fun, yarns, poems, competitions, Nature Notes, and Guide work, and each one contains a post box full of letters from the rest of the patrol. Like other Guides, Posts work in patrols bf five or six, each .with a leader, who knows the other by their letters. East “Post” is allowed to keep the letter two days, and then posts it on the next. In addition to this, each Post Guide receives a separate letter every three months. This is a typed copy of news about the various companies, notices, and matters of interest to Post Guides.

CHURCH PARADE SUNDAY. One of these notices is always about church parade. It is quite impossible for a Post Guide Company to show its loyalty to God by attending church together at any time, but they can all meet together in spirit, and this is how they have their church parades. On the third Sunday all Post Guides who can go to church wearing their badges, and all, whether at home or at church, ask God to bless the company and help them to be brave and useful. In each newsletter there is a special thought for Church Parade Sunday. “To be useful and to help other people’’ is one of the foremost thoughts, and to Post Guides a hobby is often a good substitute for the outdoor interests of active Guides, and, besides this their work is sold at Auckland headquarters. They thus l feel that they are not entirely dependent upon their families and friends, and gain some very important independence. A shield was presented by Mrs Louisson for competition among Post Companies, and is held each year by the winning company in a sewing and knitting competition. Once a year is published the Post Guides’ own magazine, Kia Ora, with poems and stories and drawing by the Posts. The Posts are also the proud possessors of a beautiful standard, worked by the Guides of the Ist Auckland Company. It is mauve silk, with a gold fringe, and a mauve trefoil on a gold background. In the centre is the company emblem—the? figure of a knight fighting bravely, though his weapon is a broken sword. Behind him is the motto—" Fight on.” Whenever a Post Guide is taking part in some special ceremony the standard is posted to her.

THE GAME OIF IMITATION. A leader and referee are chosen. The rest of the players sit in a row, in front of the leader and referee, who remain standing. The leader, whom everyone must watch closely, goes through a series of motions to each of which the players must reply by doing something exactly opposite. For instance, if the leader kinghs, all the rest must start crying. If the leader shakes her, right fist, all the rest must shake their left fists. If she nods her head, the others shake theirs. The lender must be very quick in thinking of motions, and the referee must watc-h very closely. If anyone fails to do- the opposite thing, or if she does the same as the leader, or does nothing at all, she must either pay a forfeit, or trike the leader’s plac^.