Chief Commissioners Award Midlands Region 2013

I had the good fortune to go to the Midlands Chief Commissioners award ceremony in 2012 when OldWiseBird received the award.

This year I nominated the Guider who was my JailBreak challenge team partner.  She is also our Division Commisioner, Guider, constant residential helping hander, organiser etc etc  In truth she is blue blooded (Guiding through and through) and well deserved the award.  After I had made the nomination I received a letter telling me I was to receive the award and where to attend.  I showed the letter to OldWiseBird and laughed about the admin error.  'You idiot, you're getting one too' she said she may have been more or less polite than that.

 So I proudly announce that I received a :

Chief Commisioners Award in Recognition of Outstanding Service to Local Guiding.

Blimey!

And the Midland Chief Commissioner said I was to wear it proudly and tell everyone, so look.....

(It's the one at the bottom!)


I stood and listened to my County Commissioner tell a room of other outstanding Guiders how fantastic I was. It's quite difficult to listen to people saying nice things about you.

It is also very easy to listen about all the incredible things other people do and wonder how on earth you ended up in the same room as them.

It was, however, a quite fantastic day and so lovely to receive such a huge thank you from such wonderful people.

It crossed my mind as the speeches progressed that only in a room full of Guiders would 'she's very crafty' be heard as a complement and the comment 'she was a great asset at the painting workshops but doesn't know yet that she's taking the elephant home' would have simultaneous laughing and nods of sympathetic understanding.

These awards are aimed at the 'Mrs Tuesdays', the ladies at grass roots guiding that turn up week after week, muck in and get on with it.  There's never going to be much accolade in churning out over and over with arms full of preprepared boxes, to unlock, to get the heaters going, to listen to parents moaning, to hear guides grumbling (and all the fantastic things that happen too!).  If we were in it for accolade we wouldn't be Guiders, but it is a lovely feeling to have been recognised and have a lovely badge to wear to show that I have worked hard and done my best.


At the ceremony there was an extra special bit of icing on the cake as I got a blogging meet up too, I will tell you about it next post.


If you are a Guider in the Midlands Region you can nominate anyone to receive one of these awards, you just write up why you think they deserve it on the form.  It goes off via your Division and County Commissioners to an awards committee to see if they agree and bobs your thank you. There are only a handful given out in a county each year.  The form can be found on the Midlands website.