For our Changing the World charity, our Brownies chose 'The Railway Children'. Possibly because they thought they may be able to recreate the film.........

Unfortunatley, Brown Owl had other ideas, and suggested a sleepover..............sleeping on the floor in cardboard boxes, sleeping in their clothes, not brushing their teeth or washing or changing their clothes for the duration of the sleepover (all 17 1/2 hours of it!!). Soup kitchen for supper (I am so proud of the number who didn't like soup, who decided to try it......we ended up with 20 empty mugs!). And paying for the privilege!

Ripponden Brownies raised £53.61for the Railway Children    

This is Brownie Ellie Clark's report for the weekend

Our Railway Children Fundraiser

As Brownie Guides our mission is to Change the World, so we are doing charity work for our centenary year in 2010 (100 years of GirlGuiding)

One of the charities we chose was the Railway Children. To raise money for it, we went to Bradley Wood, Brighouse on Saturday 4th - Sunday 5th April.

We found out that what the Railway Children are doing is encouraging children to talk to somebody instead of running away if you were really upset. We thought of many people you could talk to who would listen to you.

When we finally got to bed, we were on the floor on a cardboard box. Not the most comfortable night!

That made us realise how horrible it would be to sleep on the streets. No food, no wash, no toilet, no new clothes, it wouldn't be nice.

Another thing the charity does is give children who aren't as lucky as us a bed to sleep in at night - 'a safe place to dream'. Surprisingly, there are only 11 beds in the whole country!

That's where our money comes in, helpingto get more beds for those homeless children.

 

Further thoughts from Brown Owl

For Brownie age, quite an emotive subject....we had one drop out on the day because she couldn't even think about running away from home, despite my reassurances!

We used the resource pack, and the girls and leaders all left the sleepover with plenty to think about.

Excellent resource pack. My only comment would be that the case studies were aimed at guides really....I didn't feel comfortable discussing the individual cases with our Brownies in such detail, as the case studies were mostly teenagers.