Swinging on ropes, climbing trees and running a marathon, these were some of the activities set up by the military for the Girl Guides Association. Helping the girls learn team work, up their physical abilities and overcome fears. These activities coincided with the All Island Centenary Adventure Sports Festival 2010.
The sports festival is held annually, though this year it was carried out on a grander scale as part of the centenary celebrations. Centenary Ambassador, Vajira Silva elaborates “this year we decided to allow guide seniors and guiders to participate as well, unlike the previous sports festivals in which participation was exclusively for the guides. So this time we even mixed the groups. Each team consisted of participants of different ages. Guides of about 40-50 years participated with the 15 year olds as well." She adds that somewhat surprisingly the senior guides performed better than expected, outdoing the younger girls in some of the activities.
Apart from the marathon and Tarzan rope, other activities included the balancing bar, commander crawl, commando net, tyre ladder, catwalk with netball shooting, squirrel walk, toddy tapper, monkey ladder, as well as an observation and disaster management simulation.
For Chathushka Amerasinghe, a guide from Ladies College Colombo- who participated in the sports festival for the first time, the event was a learning experience. “After I went to the sports festival, climbing on a chair to fix a light bulb feels like nothing,” she said. Speaking about the events she says it was during the observation and disaster management simulation in which team-work applied the most. “So many people came up with so many different ideas. Some people even hid when the bomb alert was made,” she says, adding “it was at that point that that we realised the importance of team work."
She shared that over all the event made her realise how much the whole team relied on each other, as each of them had to put their fears aside and complete their task as their team was depending on them. The sports festival was in fact, held at the Army Commando Regiment in Ganemulla, Kadawatte, and each activity was selected and set up by the army unit to ensure safety.
The activities were also conducted and judged by the army. Centenary Ambassador, Vajira, says the event would not have been possible without the partner-ship effort of the army in organising and conducting the sport festivals over the past three years.
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