It is not every day that you receive a card from a fellow Brownie on the Isle of Man, but that is exactly what happened to Brownies in Barrow as part of Girlguiding’s “World Thinking Day”.
Each year, this is celebrated by Girl Guides and Girl Scouts across the world in late February as a day of international friendship and solidarity, ensuring that guiding members think of each other and celebrate their sisters from across the globe.
This year, Rainbows, Brownies and Guides were invited to exchange postcards with other girls in the country rather than internationally, by writing brief messages about themselves and their favourite activities and then having these cards redistributed at random.
24 girls from 24th Barrow Vickerstown Methodist Brownies, aged seven to nine, wrote cards in early February and were delighted to receive messages from the region, but also Scotland, Wales, Kent and the Isle of Man. Brownie leader Helen Taylor very pleased: “On Thinking Day we usually focus on international games to experience guiding from a foreign country but the Postcard Pals has shown the girls how much guiding is thriving here in the UK.” The girls immediately looked at maps and marked where their postcards had travelled from. They thought it was “cool” that so many Girlguiding members from all over the UK are doing activities just like them.