Over the past 10 years, the Tallangatta unit has presented two of Girl Guides’ top individual honours three times.
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This week the group nearly doubled that total all at once.
Four girls, Georgia McDonald, Beth Fisher and twins Kelsey and Celina Star, all 14, received their BP Award while Zoe Sayers, 10, has earned the Junior BP Award.
To reach this point, the five recipients have spent several years organising, travelling, walking, jumping and camping in ways designed to take them well outside their comfort zones.
Open to active guide members, the BP and Junior BP Awards provide extra challenges in six areas – promise and law, outdoors, patrol system, service, guiding traditions and world guiding.
The younger category requires the guides to complete two challenges in each area while the BP Award demands three each for 18 overall.
“Everything they do for these badges, they are meant to challenge themselves,” Tallangatta guide leader Maree Peters said.
“It can’t just be something simple that they just do every day or they’ve done before.
“The girls have certainly learned a lot of new skills and developed their leadership skills over the three or four years they’ve been working on the badges.”
The 84 challenges included taking part in events like Relay for Life, Million Paws Walk and Jump Rope For Heart.
Beth, Kelsey, Celina and Georgia organised a trivia night and raised $1000 for their community’s State Emergency Service unit while three of the guides arranged an overnight patrol camp.
Zoe travelled three hours to participate in the recent star gazing world record attempt and also went to Melbourne to join Anzac Day commemorations.
Mrs Peters said the Tallangatta guides took a day trip to Melbourne as a group.
“It was called Race Around Melbourne, so the different patrols had a map and they had to find different checkpoints and have photographic evidence that they got to each of the checkpoints,” she said.
Monday’s presentation coincided with the Tallangatta unit’s 95th anniversary and the promise ceremony of three girls who joined guides a month ago.
With four other girls attending for the first time, numbers stand at 35.
“Which in a little place like Tallangatta, that’s pretty amazing,” Mrs Peters said.
“We’re extremely proud of the girls for all the hard work they’ve put in.”
She said programs tended to evolve from the girls’ own ideas and opportunities.
“Say you join football, you learn to play football, whereas in guides we do a whole range of different skills,” Mrs Peters said.
