Ardagh Girl Guides and Longford Viking Guides come together for Orbit 2025

The first week of August heralded the start of the Irish Girl Guides International Camp, Orbit 2025, organised and run entirely by volunteers.

A camp that Leaders, Senior Branch, Guides, Brownies and Ladybirds have been planning for and looking forward to for the past year and a half.

Ardagh Girl Guides were joined by Longford Viking Guides to attend camp in Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare to be part of 1,500 strong attendance, joined by Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from all over the world, including New Zealand, Canada, US, Cyprus, Malta and Portugal.

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There were representatives of the WAGGGS World Centre Sangam, in India, who taught the girls dancing and henna tattooing.

The theme of Orbit 2025 centred on space, a metaphor for possibility, potential, and unity. Each girl represents a star, each subcamp represents a constellation, and together they form a galaxy: a symbol of how every girl shines not only in her own way but how together we can build a brighter universe.

The Camp featured 9 interactive zones tailored to help girls discover new passions, explore leadership, and gain life skills; Energising included a journey through Guiding history with stories and games from the Trefoil Guild; Uniting saw the girls take on a rocket crash with a first aid role-play, team-building challenges, and self-defence skills developing trust and cooperation; Sparking focused on how to make a Leave No Trace fire, make their own fire lighters, and build a strong, weather-proof shelter using tarps and paracord; Sustaining Our Future explored the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals with hands-on activities like Bollywood dancing, biodiversity mapping, water filtration, seed paper card making, zine creation, and global citizenship education; Engineering racing robots they built using LEGO Spike Prime with interactive coding challenges in the brand-new Campfire Quest with Tangible, launched at Orbit 2025; Creating a Free Being Me mural, and producing a short film in a video-making workshop; Expressing through African drumming, dance or yoga session, designed explore their voice and express themself fully; Uplifting visiting the planetarium with Blackrock Observatory, work as a team to launch rockets, and take on thrilling space mission challenges designed to inspire big dreams and bold moves.

In today’s world, collaboration and compassion across borders is more important than ever. Orbit 2025 provided a space where girls from different cultures can learn, lead, and grow side-by-side, united by the power of Guiding.

Thanks to volunteer Ardagh Leaders, CO, Donna Reilly who has spent the past year planning, organising, communicating with the Orbit Team to make sure both Ardagh and Viking Guides made it to camp.

Reda Ginaite who started volunteering with Ardagh only in September but made sure she was prepared to take on the role of Quartermaster, Assisted by Wil Pearman Howard and made sure everyone was well fed morning, noon and night. Stephanie McLaren was Medical Officer, assisted by Clare Fahey in ministering to all our first aid needs.

Joanna Pearman was also there on the Orbit staff team, managing bookings and movement over attendees throughout the week.

North Longford units also had volunteers on staff, with Mary and Maire Lillis delivering Hi-digital workshops, Emma Dobson delivering LEGO workshop and Siobhan, Katie and Sarah Coppinger supervising and supporting the activity zones.

Tuesday was a very exciting day for all the younger members as our volunteer Brownie and Ladybird Leaders, Clair Baxter, Zuzana Mokra, Klinta Bolmane, Melissa Eager, Lisa MaGuire, Andrea Ruiz, Chloe and Kayla Reilly took the girls to the Orbit Funday so they could experience what they have to look forward to when they are old enough to attend an International Camp!

Well done to all of the young members of Ardagh and Viking Guides who supported and looked after each other over the week.

Volunteer Reda commented, "I had the privilege of being a volunteer Leader and QM with Ardagh and Viking Guides at the International Camp Orbit 2025 – and wow, what a week!

The organization, the activities, the energy, everything was top-notch! Grateful for this amazing opportunity to lead and connect with so many wonderful people.

Let the memories and friendships from this camp last forever!" Ardagh Girl Guides, Sophie Lenehan, exclaimed, "We blasted the week off with teamwork activities. We reflected in the Guide's Own, and wrote our hopes and dreams. Wednesday was the offsite day, we went to a forest and got split into teams of 8-10 people. We played games and earned points.

Thursday we went swimming and made a badge. Friday, we built shelter out of rope, tarp, sticks and stones. Saturday, we landed right back at home."

In the weeks leading up to camp, Ardagh Guides were crafting and painting planets for the Orbit stage set and featured in the closing ceremony running with flying-bird kites inspired by the Cal y Canto Teatro workshop from the Longford Lights Festival.

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The site had free sanitary products throughout the week, sponsored by We are Riley and Aer Lingus visited and sponsored the event with great support and information should anyone wish to become a pilot!

Orbit 2025 was the first in-person International Camp since 2017, the last one being a virtual camp, Octagon held in 2021. Who knows where the next one will be, but we're sure Longford will be well represented!