World Thinking Day 2010

... "together we can end extreme poverty and hunger" is the theme of this year's World Thinking Day 2010. Girl Scout Troop 9691 made "Blessing Boxes" at our last troop meeting to take home for their World Thinking Day project. We asked our Girl Scout families to give up “a treat” of some sort each day and save $1.00 a day for two weeks in their “blessing box” OR to collect “loose CHANGE” over the next two week period to help make a positive “CHANGE”. All donated money from this project will be sent to UNICEF (Children’s Emergency Fund in Haiti) to help make a difference in their extreme poverty and hunger situation.

The girls brought their boxes to this week's meeting and we collectively combined all amounts collected in the middle of the table where each Girl Scout level was sitting and participated in counting the loose change. The Daisy girls counted their collected amount together, the Brownie girls counted theirs, and the Junior girls counted their amounts.

All our girls have big generous hearts and we as parents should be very proud of each one of them for their efforts on this service project.

An inspiration~ Daisy Girl Scout, Allyson B. (in Kindergarden), actually went into her neighborhood over the two weeks we were doing our project and earned her Blessing Box donation by feeding neighbors' pets for them. Allyson earned just over $7.00 and her parents matched her amount to reward her for her hard work and to help a good cause. What a blessing you are, Allyson... ALL OUR GIRLS did a great job and ARE such BLESSINGS!!!

In a combined effort, we collected a total of $285.18!!!

(this amount updated March 16, 2010)

The girls earned their World Thinking Day 2010 Patch for all their work, but more importantly, the girls made a difference in others' lives.

Is there any other inspirational stories about how this World Thinking Day project effected your Girl Scout? Feel free to leave your comment and share with us!

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.