The Fanilo Tantsaha Guides, Madagascar
Rural Guiding, called Fanilo Tantsaha, is a specific branch of Fanilon’i Madagaskara, The Madagascar Girl Guides Association.
Fanilo Tantsaha has over 1000 members.
A large proportion of the country's people are farmers. Aware Girl Guides are agents of change Fanilon’i Madagaskara created Fanilo Tantsaha as a development branch.
It is reserved for rural girls and young women, with courses based on Guiding education.
Fanilo Tantsaha aimed to increase skills, self-development, sharing and responsibility of its girls.
To improve their well-being and community development girls are trained about food crops, plus learning creative skills like sewing and handcrafts. These activities have spread across the country, but are particularly strong in productive regions Beratsimanana-Maevatanana, Ifanja-Analavory, and Ambalanirana-Tsiroanomandidy.
Rural Guides and the communities around Sadabe were also trained in beekeeping and fish farming.
The San Cayetano Guides, Argentina
We are a group of Girl Guides, aged 9 to 12, from San Cayetanoin in the province of Buenos Aires. It's a small town with 8,400 inhabitants. Most people know each other; people are good, hardworking, friendly and kind.
It's a safe town with nice weather, where wheat, sunflowers and corn are grown.
Most days we get up, have breakfast and go to school with our friends. After classes we play sport, have dinner and go to bed.
For us life is quiet and based around routine activities and family; there's also many physical activities and accessible health care.
Our favourite things to do include spending time together and helping others. At Guides we are divided into branches, then patrols. We meet at our headquarters, where we do most of our activities.
We try to help the community by leading collections, visiting grandparents and spending days with them. We like to serve and help.
Other girls should join Guides because it's a nice experience to help others and helps you grow as a person.
The Pacoche Guides, 13 to 27 years, Ecuador
We are the Pacoche Guides, from Manta, Ecuador.
It’s very warm and sunny here in Pacoche. The area is very beautiful and tranquil with many trees. It has an atmosphere of peace.
Here the people are kind, friendly, hard working and happy to help. We grow corn, mangos, watermelon, tomatoes, oranges, cassava, bananas, cucumbers, squash, peppers, ovo, lemons and badea.
A normal day for us would start with breakfast, helping with the household chores like washing, cooking and sweeping, then school.
We like Pacoche because it’s sunny and there’s no noise. It’s the place where we grew up - so that’s why we like it so much.
We found out about Guiding when a woman from the United States came to do mission in our community. She was a Guide and opened the group.
We meet once a week, every Friday at the Community Church. In our meeting we say a prayer, sing, play, remember the promise, make crafts and draw.
The Guiding groups are divided into the Haditas, Exploradores and Caminantes. We have gone to the Pacoche forest to learn about the environment and helped to clean a beach.
Guiding has allowed us to meet girls from other parts of the world. It has taught us to share, take responsibility, travel and be part of a space for women only.
At Guides we can have fun singing and doing different activities. We learn useful skills, visit new places and help others. All the time we are moving forward and learning more. Every day we learn something positive which helps us become better people.
Drumheller Spark Unit, Canada
Drumheller is located in the Badlands District of Alberta, with a unit of 15 girls, two Guiders and three assistants.
The town is in a valley, about an hour and a half from Calgary and home to the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology. The site houses the world’s largest discovered dinosaur.
The town, including small surrounding communities, has about 8000 people, mainly farming with a few oil and gas plants.
Girls in the valley have a lot of things to do, like dance, gymnastics, roller derby, hockey and swimming.
Being part of this community girls meet people from all walks of life and different countries because they come from all over to visit the museum.
Each Monday the group meets at a local church. They do activities, plenty of outings, camping, sleepovers and even nights at the museum.
Spark Leader Donna has been involved with Guiding since she was a young girl and works hard to keep the spirit alive and exciting for girls.
She said a lot of the girls coming through the programme really do need Guiding and being able to see the smiles on their faces while they are having fun made it all worth it.