PA Leadership Retreat

Camp Will Keep Us Together! (link)

Every spring, I lead a PA teen leadership retreat at our local Hyatt hotel. This year was our second retreat. We had approximately 65 girls attend, ages 10 years old and up. I had Junior PAs, and PAs. The retreat was a huge success! The teen girls are craving more programming that speaks to their interests. The workshops were informative, interactive and lots of fun! The girls created their own camp model in mock board meetings, they worked in teams to write their own camp song and presented their camps/songs in front of the entire group. We did lots of team building and ice-breakers and stressed that everything they learned at the retreat is something they can do at camp with their tribes of younger scouts. The girls also learned about setting goals, showing appreciation and learned that being a leader means many things. The girls slept over night at our local Hyatt, slumber party style. I booked 14 hotel rooms, had chaperones volunteer to stay the night, and secured two smaller conference rooms for our workshops. The cost per girl was $45 and included a leadership fun patch.

Workshops Ideas:
Leadership Mural (team building), cost $1 for roll of brown bag wrapping paper for the mural and markers. We hung the murals in the conference room.
Ice-Breakers: Get the girls into groups with girls they don't know and give them a shower curtain. The team of 8-10 girls have to flip the shower curtain over (while standing on it) without taking a step off of the shower curtain. Explain it's a space craft that will crash if they can't flip it inside out. The teams that finish first, cheer the others on. Google other ice-breaker ideas.
Mock Board Meeting: Give each girl (in group of 8) a role. The roles are: camp Director, Co-Director, Program Director, Treasurer, etc. Have the girls create their own camp model. Ask them to come up with: camp name, location, cost of camper, cost of PA, theme, program ideas, budget, cost to attend and more. They can use their phones to look up cost of things they'll need. Each group presents their camp to the group. Encourage questions and critical thinking. Praise their efforts but help them look at all aspects of what it takes to develop a camp of their own.
Songs: Create a song that they can sing together that goes with the theme of the retreat.
Create a Song: Each group of girls rooming together creates a camp or Girl Scout song from a pop song. They perform it the following morning.
Girl Led: Have older girls get involved by leading and creating games for the retreat. I had four PA's create a 70's game (since that is our camp theme) and the PA's led the workshop.
Role Playing: Have the girls role play leadership scenarios from camp. Girls come up with great ideas (like a camper missing home, PA's not working together, a controlling PA). Have them also role play what an inspiring PA looks like when she greets campers versus an uninspiring PA looks like. They have fun with this!
Don't lecture to them. The girls are in school enough and want to learn from experience. Make it fun and they'll soak in all of your leadership pearls of wisdom.
Create Guidelines for the retreat not rules. Let the girls tell you what the guidelines should be.
Have lots of fun!!