Girl Guides to sell off 5 activity centres.

This sounds great! The focus on such practical skills is what made it quite different from school.

To be honest I think there is a place for craft and cookery too because children don’t get enough opportunity to make and do things with their hands nowadays and learning that you make a meal and do a bit of sewing to mend clothes or make a Mother’s Day gift yourself is rather empowering.

My daughter had dietary requirements which the guiders were very good about and when they did cooking “go for its” probably mean that the other girls in her group will be less phased about it if they need to take dietary requirements into account for something else.

Guides was a great way to connect with the girls who lived nearest to us and make friends.

Guides wouldn’t exclude girls on serious grounds like not being able to afford camps or activities, I know girls who were from low income or at times zero income families who were included in everything.

It is so sad that so much has been lost in favour of modernisation.

My eldest daughter especially loved it, she loved it being all girls and how relaxed that was and she said she never laughed so much anywhere.

Our local guiders were great though and were now guiding for the daughters of the girls that had been previously been Brownies and Guides in their care. So very experienced. Probably not valued anywhere near enough by HQ!

Oo what's it called? I'd love to get hold of that!

That is hilarious.

We don't think this one aged well!

I'm old enough to have my Spy Capture badge 😉

We have a book of original Scout badges. The modern Scout badges are extremely tame in comparison. I presume the Guide badges were similar.

Slightly on a tangent but I've been reading some early 20th century schoolgirl stories and guides is featured heavily. They make fires, camp out on beds made from heather, learn signalling and first aid - and catch spies, save people and animals from fires and drowning, rescue passengers from train smashes. It is far removed from the tame crafts of today. Much closer to the skills scouts and cubs still enjoy.

I think its too late for guides. I imagine when all this is over that something will rise from the ashes Phoenix like.
What that will look like I don't know. But hopefully itll be good for girls and only girls.

Weve most of us mentioned previously that charities can become too large, lose the origin of their original mission.
I do wonder if guides has gone the same way as amnasty and Oxfam, or if it really is just the trans issue.

“I'm also really struck by how disempowered Guiders on this thread feel. Guiding isn't like other volunteer organisations, e.g. charities, where volunteers are very important, but where there are other sources of labour and income too. Without Guiders, there is literally no Guiding. If the central leadership are ignoring the discontent, and making Guiders feel so unvalued, they are signing Guiding's death warrant”

This same thing exactly is happening in other charities aimed at women and girls which are run by volunteers. In my experience the women who rise to power in these organisations are feeling empowered by the wider culture to behave like bullies because of their righteous identity politics causes. Authoritarianism in the volunteer sector is rife backed up by the idea that those who don’t subscribe to hierarchies of oppression, current trends in EDI-RJ, gender identity etc are evil bigots and deserve whatever treatment the bullies mete out to them. Volunteers are not being valued at all by boards and only carry on out of feeling for their fellow volunteers at local level and the women and girls at local level.

I agree that the trans issue itself is not the main problem. Many parents will be unaware, and others (not all) probably take a pragmatic view of "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it".

However, I think that the trans issue and the diminishing of the experience for many Guides (not all) are two sides of the same coin. If you believe that girls are a series of gender stereotypes, you are more likely to be happy to see them nail-painting and crafting, and not to worry that their range of activities lacks adventure or leadership challenge.

There is nothing at all wrong with some crafting, dancing etc. And the domestic skills are really useful - I manage my entire garden without having progressed from my Brownie gardening badge! But, it's when the girls are offered nothing else, that there is a problem. And, personally, with the relentless pressure on them about appearance, I don't think that nail-painting should be part of Guiding - what is wrong with one tiny space in life that is not about how you look?

I'm also really struck by how disempowered Guiders on this thread feel. Guiding isn't like other volunteer organisations, e.g. charities, where volunteers are very important, but where there are other sources of labour and income too. Without Guiders, there is literally no Guiding. If the central leadership are ignoring the discontent, and making Guiders feel so unvalued, they are signing Guiding's death warrant.

It is really disheartening to read all the comments rubbishing all the hard work we put in to provide a fun and beneficial experience for the girls.

We must be reading different threads. This whole thread is lamenting the fact that many guides no longer get the experience you provide (which sounds fantastic). And poster after poster has distinguished between the central management of Guiding and the hard-working leaders at the grassroots.

I don't know about the trans issue, but my local scout district has taken over the lease of another guide activity centre. The site is owned by a youth trust who were happy to have another youth group use it instead. Apparently it wasn't making money with the guides. Now it is run by a scout district and 100% volunteers (in exchange for references/tea/pizza/nights away and service badges) rather than paid workers and seems to be working ok as a not-for-profit.

It sounds like there is a lot of issues with guiding.

your group sounds great

I don’t think this is a trans issue I think this is a lack of volunteers issue. That’s certainly the case where I live. It’s down to adults not wanting to get involved - as a PP up thread said it’s a phenomenonal amount of work ☹️

I've been a Guide leader (and Ranger leader and a Brown Owl over the years) for more years than I care to remember and we camp, light fires, climb trees, go absailing, climbing, canoeing, all the adventurous stuff previous posts mention.
This term we are kayaking, lighting fires and cooking outside, hiking, camping, compass skills, wide games in the woods and archery.
Yes, sometimes we do crafts, sometimes dancing (the Bollywood night and learning line dancing were ones that stick in my mind!).
Sometimes too we learn practical life skills.
It is really disheartening to read all the comments rubbishing all the hard work we put in to provide a fun and beneficial experience for the girls.

I'm not a great fan of the new program, so we adapt it to fit our girls.
The amount of paperwork leaders have to do is ridiculous- made worse when parents don't hand in the forms btw.
And we are all girls and women, apart from a couple of well publicized cases, I've not come across any trans people in Guiding. And no, I and all the guiders I know don't approve of that policy and despite complaints there seems to be little we can do.

Scouts have the same type of policies btw- if a trans person is a member they are treated as their chosen gender. Although as a mixed group, you at least know the opposite sex will be there, you still won't be told if one is trans.

As for the Air cadets, you have to be 13. Brownies start at 7, Guides at 10.

This does not surprise me.
I imagine it will be very difficult to reverse.

When GG went gender we lost the only single sex youth organisation for girls.
No matter the limitations of the programme and dubious quality control of some local groups, it was an organisation run by women which in turn gave girls and young women valuable experiences of single sex activities.

I alluded earlier to mixed sex youth activities. Research shows that in those environments girls lose out. There's also the experience girls have of getting to know women in different generations outside a family environment, role models etc.

It's such a loss.

I agree there is a big difference between HQ and local brownies/ guides. DD goes to brownies and this term they've been building campfires, putting up tents, they have an overnight camp this week. At least three quarters of the girls in her class go and they all seem to really enjoy it. It may all be different at guides I guess.

I'll be honest in saying I've come across leaders who are really shit on allergies and don't take it seriously enough.

Its not good. Its something they should be better at.

@SweetSakura I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately some leaders are like that... but the majority aren't. We check everything for allergens like that.

We have Cubs with a range of additional needs. We adapt for all of them.

My son is allergic to eggs. (Anaphylactic). His scout leader thought I was unreasonable for being cross when they planned an activity that involved the scouts throwing raw egg. Apparently my son should "be more resilient"

That's really bad, we have forms for things like allergies that we sit down with parents and go through. These will be shared with all the leaders in the unit so that they are aware and activities are planned around. We have a number of girls with different issues at the moment and are always adapting activities to make sure we are including them as much as is possible

Both scouts and guides were utterly shit in terms of including my children with allergies or keeping them safe. Their allergies are pretty standard as well. Neither movement has moved with the times. My children have found other hobbies and groups that weren't constantly doing activities revolving around food.

Speaking as an ex- leader it was not the paperwork around activities (forms, risk assessment etc) it was the detailed tick boxing round the current programme in GO. It was tedious and to be honest drained the joy out of doing anything. I have no desire to go back to that.

Reading some of the current Facebook discussions by leaders it feels like the organisation is splitting in two - those at HQ who 'lead' and those on the ground that 'do'. The role of leadership is to take your team with you - something has seriously gone wrong to create this divide. Team working is a key aspect of guiding - well this seems to be a great example of how not to do it.

I don't know that this is totally true.

They have fared better, but it is not what it used to be, and it is still going the way of more and more paperwork, and that means things have to be set in stone well ahead. If groups are struggling to find leaders, this makes it much worse because it takes up so much leader time.

A lot if about liability and insurance coverage, and it's affecting a lot of kids activities.