By Taylor Chartrand

Redcliff Girl Guides fundraising for the trip of a lifetime

Dec 8, 2018 | 6:17 PM

Redcliff, AB – The Redcliff Girl Guides are planning a little trip.

The local ladies are currently fundraising money to head east to Ontario for the event known as LEAP.

LEAP is an annual initiative put on by Girl Guides Canada and it allows them an opportunity to step outside of their comfort zone and participate in a unique camping experience.

“Today the whole event for the trade-show was actually a fundraiser for what is called ‘LEAP’ and that’s a camp that we’re going to in Ontario,” explained Girl Guide leader Janice Weiss. “That will be in the first week of August, 2019.”

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Janice, along with another leader and 8 of the Redcliff Girl Guides have a long path of fundraising ahead of them.

The group needs to raise roughly $22,000 and as you could imagine, that’s a lot of cookies to sell.

“We do have a ton of cookies to sell,” laughed Weiss. “We’ll do our winter sale and then our spring campaign as well. Those cookie sales have to raise about 25% of our money. We have had businesses that have donated to help us go as well.”

Weiss then explained the trip in further detail.

“It’s a national event and the camp itself is a six-day experience. There are girl guides from all across Canada that will be there. It’s just all about experiencing new things that they wouldn’t get to do here because we’re a smaller unit. It’s showing what girl guides is all about and providing a sense of unity,” said Weiss.

Weiss stated that they’re going to make the most of the experience.

“Because we’re already planning the trip to Ontario, we wanted to extend our trip for about four days and take the girls on a train ride, which you don’t get to do around here. That is from Ottawa to Toronto and then we’re going to hopefully canoe on the canal.”

“We also plan on seeing the Canadian mint and plan on watching the changing of the guard. There also just happens to be a fireworks festival during the time we’ll be there. We’re trying to get the girls to do a lot of stuff that they can’t necessarily do here.”

And that is exactly what the Girl Guides mission is. To try new things and gain some life experience.

“As Girl Guide leaders we just try to do stuff that the kids normally wouldn’t get exposed to. We teach them things like how to camp, light fires and archery. Basically things we can do as a group.”

Nine-year-old Raya Dousselaere is one of the local Girl Guides who will be participating in the trip and she said she’s ready for an adventure.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun because I’ve never been there and it’s going to be neat trying new things like canoeing with nine other people. I just love the Girl Guides and getting to learn about fun crafts and it always allows me to go to fun places that I want to go to.”