The Girl Guides and Brownies did their part by helping to clean up their community.
According to Kathy Slade, the adult leader in charge of the Brownies, the Girl Guides aim to empower girls and women by teaching them necessary life skills. An aspect of empowerment is teaching them to be valuable citizens, including caring for their communities, the earth and all other living things. With the clean-up initiative, which took place on May 13, the Brownies learned about the dangers surrounding pollution and the threat it poses to animals.
Their eyes were also opened to the reality that even though they had cleaned up the sidewalk it wouldn’t stay clean so they came up with ideas on how to combat this issue, namely educating others and implementing fines for those who litter.
“As the Brownies and Guides in the greater Roodepoort area do not have a permanent venue to meet in as yet [travelling to Krugersdorp is no longer practical or viable] we sometimes visit the Flowers, Seeds and Busy Bees Nursery in Lockies Lane, Florida, where we hold informal meetings. Thus, we saw this clean up as being a small gesture of thanks to the owners of the nursery for accommodating us, especially when we pitch up unannounced,” explained Kathy.
Kathy said the children joined in the clean-up with enthusiasm and challenged one another at who could pick up the most litter. She added, “There was no physical prize for the winner, just a warm feeling in everyone’s heart that they had done a good deed and made the world that tiny bit better.”
Kathy mentioned they would like to do other projects such as this one, however, they first have to find a low-cost venue for their girls to meet at in the Discovery and Florida region.
“We’d love women to voluntarily join as helpers, or train to be leaders, in our various units. Of course, we look forward to welcoming more girls into the largest female youth group in the world,” concluded Kathy
Kathy also wanted to thank all those that helped with the clean up.
Any person interested or wanting to help with a venue can contact Kathy on 074 756 1694.
