World Thinking Day 2010 Kick Off

Our troop meeting this week kicked off World Thinking Day 2010 which is officially February 22. The World Thinking Day theme for 2010 is girls worldwide say "together we can end extreme poverty and hunger" ; the aim is to raise awareness among everyone about the situation and improve the lives of the poorest people in the world.

Our first activity was a game that Girl Scouts in Zimbabwe play called "Cabbage".

The girls wander around the room and when the leaders calls out ‘Cabbage!’, all the players must curl up in a tight ball like a cabbage and close their eyes. The leader covers one of the players with a blanket then asks the other players to open their eyes. The players must work out which player is under the blanket. The first one to call out the right name is the winner! Since we have a large group of girls we covered two girls with a blanket per game.

After our fun game we sat down and got serious, discussing this year's World Thinking Day theme of extreme poverty and hunger in the world.

• Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.


• More than 30 per cent of children in developing countries – about 600 million – live on less than US $1.25 a day.


• Basic needs such as a house to live in, food to eat, fresh water to drink, and a place to bath or go "potty" are not met in areas of extreme poverty.

We broke into groups by level and viewed photos of extreme poverty. The girls were to look at each picture and share what they saw and how they felt. This was a somber time, but a time the girls saw with their eyes what poverty looks like and hopefully realize the truth the people live without the things we so easily take for granted. When we got back together in our large group we re-capped our observations. Ask your Girl Scout what they learned and how they felt when they saw these pictures.