Why do GirlGuiding Skills Matter in Real Life

Gina is one of our awesome Volunteers who’s been involved with GirlGuiding NZ for some time. Over this time she has learned different skills which have helped her in real life. Read about her experience below!

“I am the Charge Nurse of a 32-bed rural Continuing Care unit (Rhoda Read) here in Morrinsville. Recently we had an unexpected power cut. Rhoda Read isn’t big enough to have its own generator (if we have a prolonged outage we have to get the portable generator bought over from the main DHB campus in Hamilton. Which is roughly a 3 hour round trip to get the generator firing up the power).

This power cut occurred at 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon. Dinner needed to be started by 3.45 p.m. or otherwise, no one would be eating any time soon. Most of Morrinsville was out of power, so going to buy alternatives from the shops or takeaways wasn’t an option as, without any power, they too were closed.

So all the skills I learned with GirlGuiding NZ, and the training, and the knowledge swung into action. For me, it was about risk management, what issue to deal with first (dinner, warmth, ability for patients to call for nursing assistance) and along with my staff, I had it all sorted out within the first 20 minutes. The biggest thing was the dinner which was due for serving at 5 p.m.

So I called the another volunteer with a list of equipment I wanted from our camping shed who bought me up the QM big cast iron burners and big cook pots from the camping shed (thanks Wendy Pulman!)

The Kitchen Assistant and I figured out how we were going to adapt and cook the dinner out on the back steps using the Guide camp gear. I made a windbreak using the recycling bins – because that’s all we had.

As a result, the dinner was served at 5.03 p.m. (only 3 minutes behind schedule) at the correct temperature, meeting all the food safety requirements of a hospital.

The next day my Line Manager and the main hospital Duty Managers did a shout out for me at the main managers meeting of the day; stating that I was the perfect person to deal with that situation and they were lucky I was a Girl Guide (kudos to Girl Guiding I say!)

So be Prepared and Ready – you never know when the skills you learn through Guiding will be needed.”