L'AVENTURE - The Challenge!

Click here to get the online article from Ceylon Today - 22-07-12 By Sikander Sabeer

Today, the entire world is starving for young leaders and young entrepreneurs who can be a change and utilized their young age on both studies and extracurricular activities. As we know women play an important role in socio and economic development, they represent half of the world’s population and most of them live in Asia.

They face tremendous challenges in terms of nutrition, sexual reproductive health, education, employment etc. Physical and mental health has become a crucial factor for a young woman to produce a healthy generation, who can succeed the world.

Keeping this in mind 300 young girls were pumped up with energy and were bursting with excitement to experience the thrill of adventure as a celebration of the 95th anniversary of the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association with an adventurous day named ‘L’AVENTURE’. This exciting event was organized by the President’s Guides of the Western Province and the special Chief Guest of the event was the Zonal Director of Education, Colombo Zone, Chitrangani Lunuwila.

The event took place at the Vihara Maha Devi Park on 30 June 2012. Ms. Lunuwila enlightened the young Girls Guides in her opening remarks, "It was indeed a great pleasure to see young girls organizing such a wonderful and energetic event, when most of the children are running for tuition classes in the competitive education system". She also encouraged the parents to support their children in such events as it would improve their leadership skills, team spirit and self-confidence which are vital to face the fast moving world.

Some of the adventurous games like Spider crawl-(where the girls had to crawl on a net ,which was setup horizontally, good six meters above the ground!) ,Vertical rope climbing-(this was voted the hardest challenge!) and the challenging Commando crawl- (where they crawled under barbed wire!) were challenging to the youngsters. The girls' eyes filled with determination to complete a task and voices of triumph filled the Vihara Maha Devi Park.

The organizing committee consisting of 16–18-year-olds promising President's Guides of the country watched the beaming faces of their sister Girl Guides beaming even more. The President of the organizing committee, Devi Wijesinghe and the Secretary Sakuni Cooray together with the other members of the organizing committee had marked a memorable and significant event in the Girl Guide calendar.

“It had not been an easy task organizing such a huge event all by ourselves. We had held brainstorming sessions in the Girl Guide Headquarters from early April, determined to make this event a reality. We had to carryout tasks which were familiar and some unfamiliar to us. But, as the Girl Guide motto says we were ‘Prepared’ for the challenges, hence we were able to successfully achieve them” commented a member of the organizing committee.

The energetic participants completed the challenges setup and were rewarded by an extra dancing session .Then it was time to join in a glamorous camp fire. In the brief closing ceremony the highlights of the event and the joyful moments that occurred when organizing the event was presented as a video clip, the fun clip was interrupted with a heavy shower, which in the end was thought to be for the best to wash away the sweat off the bright smiling faces.

The event started with smiles and ended with smiles! According to the Guide Law ‘A Guide is courageous and faces all situations with understanding’ (The Guide law stands as pillars to each and every Girl Guide). The celebrations/event concluded: making friendships stronger, enhancing opportunities for girls by letting them feel the thrill of adventure; all leading to a prosperous future of this nation.

The Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association was founded in 1917 by Jenny Calverly. For 95 blissful years this organization has been enriching lives of girls and young women through activities which help to develop a girl's Potential. Guiding builds self-confidence, as well as cultivate habits of helping others, through all this; not forgetting to have fun.