Junior BP Award

Una Laughton-Jones has been presented with the Junior BP Award at a special ceremony attended by family, Guides and Leaders.

Una worked on the award over several years, starting the syllabus in the Junior section and finishing the documentation requirements earier this year. The challenges meant that she was introduced to new activities and had the opportunity for personal development and attaining new skills.

With a Great-Grandmother who was a Guide Leader, it seemed logical for Una to try Guiding. She joined the Ballarat Begonia Guides as a 5 year old, enjoyed some years as a Delacombe Junior Guide, then progressed to the 1st Sebastopol Guides as a 10 year old. Una has thoroughly enjoyed the activities available to her and has been keen to undertake badge work.

The award ceremony included a collection of activities relating to the clauses Una completed. This included miming, decoding a morse coded message, balancing, Chinese whispers and nibbling logos in biscuits. A ladder was used as a prop throughout the night to indicate that the Queen’s Guide Award is the achievement at the top of the ladder.

Unit Leader Dawn Fischer presented the badge and certificate alongside Leaders Melissa Wright and Angela Smith.

Junior BP Award

The Junior BP Award is the first peak achievement award of the Australian Guide Program. It requires completion of 2 clauses of each of the Guiding fundamentals. Una’s challenges included:

• Guiding Traditions – organised an activity to teach the Guides morse code
• Service – performed a reading at her local church and took part the in Jump Rope for Heart campaign to raise funds for the Heart Foundation.
• Outdoors – cooked a meal outdoors and spent time as part of the Nipper program
• Leadership and Patrol System – participated fully in the Guiding patrol system including taking on a role as Patrol Leader
• World Guiding – learned to speak some words in Japanese to be able to communicate with the visiting Japenese Guides
• Promise and Law-visited a synagogue to find out about a religion other than her own and learned how to play taps on the piano

We congratulate Una and look forward to seeing her next accomplishments as she works towards the BP Award.