Jodrell Guild Make a Difference!

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Jodrell Trefoil Guild in Cheshire joined Girlguiding Goostrey Rainbow, Brownie, Guide and Senior Section units for a SING FOR CHANGE 'carols with a difference' at Christmas.

Jodrell Trefoil Guild invited the Girlguiding Goostrey units to join them in supporting the Water Aid project from the Girlguiding UK Changing the World catalogue. The project involved everyone learning six songs about water, one of which has the chorus "Five thousand children a day, needlessly die when their lives could be saved". The Brownie unit made posters and put them up all round our village taking those words as a punch line. The event was titled 'Sing for Change' and the Rainbows learned the songs by listening to the CD disc which came in the pack. I taught the Brownies, Guides, Senior section and Trefoil members the songs with the accompanying music and all the girls were given sponsor forms. All the songs are very 'catchy' and we used printed words, and everyone quickly picked up the tunes.

Goostrey village has a grassy area where they were planning to light up a tree for Christmas so we decided to advertise a 'carol singing with a difference' and to have collection buckets for the public. On the night in December it poured with rain, so we moved the venue into Goostrey Methodist Chapel - I had pre-booked it 'just in case' and they kindly allowed us full facilities with no charge. We organised someone to provide mugs of hop soup and fresh bread which we served at the end of the singing.

The Methodist Chapel is not enormous and we had all the guiding people, including Trefoil, at the front alongside the lit up tree which the church had already decorated. The rest of the chapel was full with parents and other adults. One of my Brownies played the cornet as accompaniment for all the carols and we used the CD disc to accompany the water aid songs. It all worked very well indeed. We took a public collection and that, plus some sponsorship that the Trefoil had done, came to £280.00. This was sent off as the Trefoil donation and we have applied for our Change the World badges. The five units have since collected in their sponsor money and the grand total is now £1078.00 from the whole village. We understand that it takes £15.00 to give one person clean water, sanitation and health hygiene for life so we have 'changed the lives' of 71 people by our Sing For Change evening.

I hope this answers all your questions. It was a really good 'pulling together' of all the guiding sections within our village. I am hoping that we will be able to do another one in the summer when the village has a Rose Day Fete which includes everyone, and we are hoping to then raise awareness and funds to buy books for Sub-Saharan Africa with 'ubuntu' - another of the GG UK Changing the world projects.

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