Brianna's icebreakers can turn boring meetings fun.
	Need a quickie activity to get a meeting started? Try the Group Hula! You'll need a hula hoop and a fun sense of humor: Instruct everyone in the group to stand in a circle and hold hands. Place the hula hoop around somebody's arm before they link hands with the person next to them. The goal is to pass the hula hoop around the circle without letting go of each others' hands. Encourage them to go as quickly as possible. Once they get the hang of it, time them to see how fast they can pass the hula hoop completely around. You may want to use more than one hula hoop and pass them around the circle in opposite directions. Or, you could split your group in half and have the two groups race to see which half can pass the hula hoop around the fastest. Good luck!

Make Your Meetings Rock
The Magic of Icebreakers

By Brianna, 17
By Girls, For Girls National Advisory Committee member

Because I'm really active in a lot of different clubs and organizations, I attend a lot of meetings. If there's one thing I've learned, sitting through a boring meeting is not fun! So, I went on a mission to make meetings more fun! Who says work has to be boring and hard?

Breaking the Ice

As part of my Girl Scout Gold Award®, I began collecting "icebreakers," team-building games, and energizers to compile into kits that will be distributed to community groups for their meetings throughout the year. Instructions for the games and a list of the materials needed will be included with each kit.

My philosophy is that a meeting is more effective if you use games to break the ice. Here's why:

• Beginning a meeting with an icebreaker makes everyone more comfortable, so it's easier to facilitate discussions and share opinions.
• Once people know one another, team-building activities help the group bond.
• Team-building games create a more unified feeling and help everyone work together and solve problems.

Besides team-building and getting-to-know-you activities, it's important to have activities that just get the blood pumping. The average adult attention span is 11 minutes; however most meetings last an hour or more. Interspersing "energizers" throughout meetings gives everyone a chance to get up, move around, vocalize, and re-focus on the goal of the meeting.

Since beginning this project, I've learned a lot of icebreakers and games that I use at the meetings I attend. It's really cool to see how much it helps the group: adults bond with kids, people start warming up to each other, and no one is afraid to offer their opinion. People actually smile during the meeting—and a domino effect occurs:

• People aren't as wary to attend meetings because they know the meetings won't be boring.
• When attendance increases, the group can accomplish more things during the meeting!

Meetings can be as fun as sitting on a block of ice—but if you "break the ice," you, too, can make the most of your meetings!