Since second briefing, whilst being away from the social media for a while, Team Malawi have still been buzzing with activity. Several phone conferences and a lot of emails and texts have seen a lot of work covered and progress made. The big news of the week - we have been given dates for project! We are still finalising the details but it is so exciting to be able to actually write it properly on a calendar at last. Let the flight bookings commence...
Whilst we are most excited to know the dates of our project, we have many things to be pleased about this month. Our badges have finally arrived, so if you have ordered badges they should be with you soon. If you haven't ordered any yet, get in touch as you will want to get your hands on them - they look really great! If you know a team member personally, contact them directly, otherwise you can always reach us at goldmalawi2015@outlook.com
We have also been away on third briefing this weekend - busy times for Team Malawi! After a rather long journey down to Hampshire (a lot longer for some of us than others) including an eventful road trip in Ruth's car, we made it to Andreah's house to begin the weekend. Once we had completely filled the house with resources and luggage for the weekend, we began with the third briefing tradition of GOLD Malawi teams - tie dying our pants! This is a tradition set up by the first GOLD Malawi team and has been done at the third briefing of every following team.
We began Saturday morning bright and early, setting our aims for the weekend as we had so much to get through, with it being our last physical meeting together before we go to the airport. Ruth started us off by updating us on the contact we have had from Malawi so far and helping us to work out what we think the key themes of our trainings will be: Recruitment and Retention training; PR and marketing training; Leadership and Advocacy training; and training the Malawian GOLD teams. MAGGA have set up their own 'GOLD' teams since last years UK team went; we are going to help train their teams so that they can go on and train new leaders around the country after we leave.
After a lengthy discussion between the teachers and the non-teachers of our team defining activity plans, training plans and session plans, making sure we all understood what we meant by each of them, we started to fill out training plans for each of our main themes. We spent most of Saturday hard at work with our training plans trying to fill out as much of the details as we could to make the best resource we can for on project.
With much hilarity, we managed to unravel our tie dyed pants and see the wonderful patterns and bright colours we had made. In the evening, we headed out bowling for a break and had some very close rounds. Louise was worrying more than just our team with her violent back-swing!
Team Malawi doesn't rest however, and after we had got back from bowling and had enormous amounts of curry for tea, we started to discuss the kit list again to work out what people still needed to buy in the few weeks we have remaining before we fly out.
On Sunday morning we spent a lot of time reading through our health forms and risk assessments - a paperwork heavy morning! After a lot of clearing up, last minute questions and writing to-do-lists for the coming weeks, it was time for us to get on the road again, or rather all pile into Ruth's car for the drop off home.
One more addition to the team this weekend, was a mouse each! Alice made everyone a mouse mascot to take on project with them as a travel companion.
We have just over four weeks left now until we leave for project, so keep checking back for updates as we prepare to go on project. There is so much to do!
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter: @GOLDMalawi2015 and like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/GOLDMalawi2015
GOLD love,
Alice and Team Malawi x
