This blog is going to detail the planning process of District Thinking Day 2019, which I planned as part of my Queen's Guide.
It had been suggested to me by my mentor that I could volunteer to assist with the planning as my Service In Guiding Element 3. I brought it up at a District meeting and somehow ended up being asked if I would plan the whole thing..! At this meeting, we also gathered a few ideas from other leaders which I went to investigate. I pulled up a shortlist and found out the various prices. I also contacted a few local coach companies to get quotes for travelling to each of the chosen venues. From this information, I created a Google Form questionnaire, asking leaders which of the options they wanted to do, and what dates they were available. I also asked them whether they wanted to have 3 separate coach meeting points, as we usually do, or whether they wanted a single central meeting point. It had been suggested by a fellow leader that a single central point would make much more sense as it would mean that parents with girls in different sections would only have to drop off at one place, rather than 2 as has happened in the past (and parents have previously not registered this and dropped both girls off at one stop, incorrectly).
I gave the leaders 2 weeks to reply to my questionnaire and the results were clear cut - and almost unanimous vote to visit Techniquest in Cardiff and there were 2 dates which had equal votes so I chose one of them, Saturday March 9th. The coach situation was more puzzling, almost all the leaders had voted to continue as we had been doing, with 3 separate coach pickups, even though to me this was more work for the parents. I put this on the back burner for now, and emailed out the date, location and price for the trip. I asked for a £10 deposit for each girl, to secure their place, and then the final balance closer to the time, of £5 per girl and £9 per adult.
I collected the deposits and kept track of the numbers over the course of the month we allowed for deposits to be paid. At the end of this time, we had 116 girls and 28 adults booked on the trip across 9 units! I also made a decision on the coach company and confirmed our booking with them. I then returned to thinking about the coach pickup location. I still thought it would be a good idea for all the girls to be picked up from the same place so I consulted another leader and she also agreed. I decided that we would give it a go, even though a large proportion of leaders didn't think it was a good idea. My logic was that we could trial it this year and, if they didn't think it went well then they could go back to their original method next year, when I will have moved out of the district! I also asked my Queen's Guide mentor if she would be able to be our home contact for the day as she doesn't run any units. She said she was more than happy so I got some contact details for her to send to all the leaders.
As it got closer to the trip date, I sent out more final details, relating to where we would be stopping for dinner, how much spending money girls should bring, and exact pick up and drop off times. I then visited Techniquest with my fiancé so that we could gather information for my risk assessment. He writes lots of risk assessments at work so I thought he would be best placed to help me with that as I have never written one for a large scale event before. Techniquest were very nice and allowed us to visit free of charge. We were there for about 2 hours, although part of that was us having a go at some of the activities! We made lots of notes about areas which would need to be covered on the risk assessment, such as a dark area with flashing lights and the coach drop off area.We also stopped on our way home at the services where we will be having dinner, to assess what options were available, their prices, and what was available for gluten free girls, which was a concern raised by several other leaders.
Once we had completed our visit, I wrote up a detailed risk assessment which was emailed out to all the leaders. I also spent some time creating details sheets for all the leaders to carry on the day. I made an A5 sheet, one for each unit, giving details of the number of girls expected to be on their coach, a timetable of the day (including lunch slot and times of the free show that they could book onto on arrival), and the phone numbers of me, the District Commissioner, and the Home Contact. Finally, I created myself some sheets with important information on, including phone numbers for all the units, which unit was on which coach, a detailed timetable with additional notes where needed, and a signup sheet for visiting the shop (it is a small shop so we spread the units out throughout the day).
The full blog on the details of the trip is here. The trip went incredibly smoothly, several leaders came up to me to tell me I had done a great job of organising it. The single coach pickup point worked perfectly, hopefully they will continue to do it that way as I think it was a great idea, and made life so much easier for the parents. Organising a large scale trip was more stressful than I had anticipated, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
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