Amsterdam is a beautiful city, rich in history and culture, art and fashion, and is very accessible to travel through. We will organise a one-day wide game, based around both Where’s Wally and a compendium of traditional table top family games, to encourage groups to explore the city of Amsterdam, meet other groups from across the region and learn more about travelling to another country.
You will build your adventure around this; your team decides how and when to travel, what to do, where to stay and how long to go for. We would love for you to include your young people in making many of these decisions, and to begin learning travel and planning skills. We also encourage you to think about how you can make your trip as planet-friendly as possible – not just in relation to how you travel, but what you buy/take/leave – we suggest talking to your group members, as we find they tend to have lots of ideas!
Your leadership team will need to include someone who holds the relevant residential qualifications for your section and someone who has or is using the opportunity to gain their travelling abroad/international module of the Going Away With scheme at a future date.
As an international trip, the permission to plan and residential event notification (REN) will go through the region for approval (ie not signed off locally by division or county commissioners) and must be submitted using GO. Further information will be provided about this after signing up, and we intend to host our next travelling abroad training in Spring 2025 to support anyone who needs this.
Our intention will be to run the event on Saturday 1st November 2025.
Please note that this is a change to our initial suggested date due to scarcity of accommodation a huge dance event on 25/26 Oct – and we appreciate for some this takes it out of half term as we have a three week span of half term weeks across the region with some schools having one of those weeks and others having 2 but the ideal weekend for us now doesn’t work for Amsterdam. Apologies if this affects the ability of any groups to attend.
There will be cost of £20 per person which includes an event badge and scarf.
How to sign up
1. Expression of interest form by 31 December 2024
If you are interested in being part of this adventure, please express your interest by completing this form by 31 Dec 2024. This will give us an idea of numbers, and allow us to contact you with more information to help you plan. We will confirm in early January or sooner whether we are able to offer both days or just one based on your answers.
2. Registration form by 22 February 2025
We will invite you to formally register your group through a different link, which will ask you to confirm you are coming and to provide approximate numbers. At this point we will also ask you to pay the group deposit of £100 by 22 Feb 2025.
3. Confirmation form by 31 May 2025
We will ask you to confirm your final numbers and details of your accommodation and travel plans by 31 May 2025. This is when you will also need to pay the balance of the fees.
In the meantime, please start planning, and recruit your team of leaders and young people. You may decide to offer this wider than a single unit – could you bring a district or division group, or offer to take local young leaders too?
Challenge badge
There will be a fun challenge badge based around a compendium of table top games for all units to take part in, around the same time as we’re assembling in Amsterdam.
Do you have a question for us?
Please contact international@girlguidinglaser.org.uk if you have any questions.
