Saskatoon Area Girl Guides  

   The 17th Spark Unit is Making A Difference!

Shelly, Denise, and Debbie are Guiders for the 17th Spark Unit. They held a sleepover for Sparks with the theme of "Violence Against Women as their inspiration.

We actually planned a whole Sparks Mother/Daughter sleepover and enrollment around service. This event was held at the Saskatoon Girl Guide House on Nov. 28 and 29th and one of things we did was accept donations from our members and their invited guests. We received quite a lot  at first were going to split up the donation between the Interval house and the food bank but since most of the things were Lady orientated and geared towards children we just dropped the stuff off after our sleepover.  We also included the left over food supplies from the sleepover that would normally would have been distributed or returned.  Some of the donated items were also taken to the Royal University Children's ward.

We also geared our crafts for the sleepover towards service and helping out. The first which is most easily viewed in the picture is our Christmas mice with a Candy Cane used for a tail. With all of our crafts we had the girls make two - one for themselves and one to donate. The Candy Cane mice were for the Children at the interval house. The other was a Hot Chocolate ice cream cone. Made by shaping a baggie into a cone shape using hot cocoa for the cone, mini marshmallows for the ice cream and a candy berry for the cherry; these were given to the ladies at the interval house.

Since the girls are aged 5-7 we did not go into much depth about the day or what it stood for instead we focused on explaining to them that our gifts would be given to women and their children who went to stay at a place called Interval house when they had no other place to stay or the home they were in was not safe or happy any longer.  

We also sang songs that were peace related or about changing the world. Specifically "We Can Make a Difference" from Still singing after all these years.

All the ladies and girls represented in this picture have signed consent or knew that I would be sharing these photo's (i.e. adult non members)