Guiders Staff Room Part 3

[Groovee]

Reconvening over here ladies.

Register on girlguiding.org.uk. Think its the get involved link, it's not hard to follow. That will send a notification to the DC of your area, and should get the ball rolling. You might need to try a couple of units to get a good fit, something which can be glossed over.

If you have your membership number it might help locate your records, but because you've been out of guiding for a while you'll need to redo your leadership qualification. You'll be assigned a mentor for that, but it's not hard, I did mine in 3 months.

There's all sorts of fb groups too, once you get going. A lot are closed, and need proof of membership, but we can walk you through that later!

Welcome!

Through the website. If there's no response in 21 days try to find your local HQ and drop them a mail.

I just tried to buy National Express coach tickets with the promo discount code on the Guiding website.

It worked out £1 more than the cost of booking without the discount!!!

Day off work to recover from Brownie Holiday. Absolutely shattered. We were down to 3 leaders as one had surgery last week, then I developed an awful sore neck/throat/ear/eye thing down one side of my face. I am never risking a whole weekend with bare minimum ratios again. It was so tiring. Got home at 6, in bed by 8.
Girls had a great time though: no falling out and hardly any tears all weekend. Lots of things they liked, nothing any of them would change and everyone tried at least one new food or activity. I'm off for a nap!

Hello all :)

This keeps slipping off TIO & I forget all about it until the next time I'm having a 'flap' and think to come here

How's everyone doing? I've recruited two new volunteers for my Guides but, am losing my very lovely AL for Rainbows :(

Thankfully still have my YL, dd as Guide helper and a good group of parents (for now!)

Have any of you ever run a session on respect? I need something for my Guides.

There were a couple of minor incidents last week which I had to pull my them up on but not sure, with the giddyness of the Easter hols looming, that any attention was actually paid to what I was saying about not just randomly chucking other people's belongings (beakers and bits belonging to my Rainbows) in the bin instead of actually putting it away properly. It left me really quite pissed off tbh, it's taken me 2 years to build up resources/available funds for both units & then they randomly chuck it...through laziness/cba-ness I presume

I need to find some sort of different promise activity for my Rainbows too - we've done ordering the words, jigsaws, mobiles, books, relay races. I'm not feeling very inspired by any of them atm . Hopefully a scroll of Pinterest in the morning will have something jumping out at me!

Thank you for the information. How does the programme work now? When I was last involved Brownies had Pre-promise, Footpath, Road and Highway challenges according to how long they had been members. Have these gone?

20th Footpath etc went eons ago! We've had the Adventure since then... with 2 badge styles. Have a look on GG's website for new prog info. It's more integrated across all sections and massively updated for modern life and STEM careers.

lucy I and others have done trees of hands where you think of a way to be kind and helpful and/or nice things to say about others on each hand.
Also anything relating to beliefs.

Thanks drspouse, I don't think I've done that with the Rainbows yet - tried once with the Guides but they were all in a very silly mood that night! I think we'll give it a go,and maybe Promise elephants to take home.

Think I might write myself a list of Promise activities for both that I can refer to, save me getting myself in a flap!

Can't beat a good brainstorming activity Lucysmam

We used earth hour to cover our keeping the promise activity. Each girl, after a group discussion, wrote down one small thing they could do to help the world they live in. We'll look at them after Easter, and see how we got on.

Good turn sticker charts for rainbows?

20th a good spreadsheet is all you need programme currently has 3 areas, You, Community and World. Your programme is balanced if you cover these areas relatively equally. New programme is announced in July. Think it'll be very similar to the scout one in format.

Right; I'm going with debate for my Guides for the first week back. Do these topics sound ok...?

Should kids have to do chores around the house?
Are school uniforms a good or bad idea?
Girls have it better than boys...

Just need something to do with respecting belongings as well as people to go with it now I think :)

Can you tie it in with rights and the corresponding responsibilities? So right to education, but responsibility to learn/work hard, and why we have these? This can all tie back into the promise, eg to do our best, to not drop litter, to speak politely.

I keep forgetting about this thread too, but feeling Guide-y today after a good unit meeting last night and planning for summer term!
Has anyone successfully made bird houses/ bird boxes with Guides? They've asked to do it, but I can't see anything online that looks the right level of challenging but not full on carpentry!

Can you get a flat pack kit?
We did book ends with a power saw (our family one - the kind which is part of a power drill), they were very good at it apart from not really appreciating that lines need to be straight!

Flat pack kit is a good shout, I will have a look!

www.instructables.com/id/Bird-House-From-One-Plank/ This is a great pattern for a birdhouse, especially if you have opportunity to cut the planks up to size in advance of the meeting.

ILookedintheWater thanks, that looks good, off to research it now!

Can anyone share with me regarding security in their meeting place. For 6 years we've locked the door after an unfortunate incident back then. The meeting place have sent an email as the "Landlord" and want the door left open at all times now. This goes against everything we agreed 6 years ago and my feelings of safeguarding. I work in a profession where safeguarding is a huge thing and therefore I'm feeling my heckles have been raised by the tone of the email and I am seeing it differently.

We have open doors due to the layout of the area. Will discuss with the dc when she visits next term in case she thinks it's a problem.

Doors locked. We meet in a community centre next to a park, and if we don't lock the, risk random people coming in to use the toilets. One side of our hall has some emergency exits we open when it's hot.

Locked doors for us; it's rare that anyone passes tbh as our meeting place is on a very quiet street but we're all agreed we feel safer with the doors locked & there's a door bell should someone actually need to get in.

They're opened for a 25 minute ish window between Rainbows and Guides for pick ups and drop offs but parents are asked to stay in the entrance & they generally respect that. Plus there's always a Guider out there keeping an eye.

The risk needs to be assessed for security (people getting in) and fire (people getting out).
If the landlord's assessment is that fire safety takes priority and your is that security takes priority then you are at an impasse unless someone compromises.
May I suggest one of these:
magnetic alarm or similar? I use them on fire doors on residentials so if a girl goes wandering in the night we all wake up, after a sleepwalker gave us a bit of a fright one year. They attach with double sided tape and have an off switch so perhaps you could leave it on the door and just flick it on when you would normally lock the door?

Have any of you seen the new REN forms? And the new rules for home contacts etc?
12 weeks in advance and then a more detailed one 4 weeks in advance. Home contact must be a guider and will need special training! New rules/forms out now for info/to try out and then compulsory from September.
This, above everything else, is making me seriously rethink volunteering. The additional admin over the last few years almost made me go, then the change of promise, then additional training for things we had already done, but I managed (eventually) to recruit a small team and we're just about up to speed, and then along comes this..... 6 page REN!!! 6 pages!!!! I usually do 3 residentials a year and was hoping to pop in a few sleepovers as well now there's a few of us. The paperwork for a sleepover is going to take me longer than a sleepover lasts! So disappointed. I thought the changes were supposed to be making it easier. It seems to me that the activities have been dumbed down to make the meetings 'simpler' to run and everything else is being made more complicated. Gah!

Saw it and saw a few posts on the Facebook pages.

Our security is no closer to being solved. I was accused of something and within an hour was able to tell them who exactly it was. Currently looking at new venues. They can have the embarrassment when there is no Guiding units at their venue anymore!

Re the new REN- I'm perplexed by the male/female/gender neutral question.
Males can't sleep with females on residentials.
Can gender neutrals sleep with females? Because m>f transgender people can, pre-op, self ID'd or whatever.
Or for that matter, can gender neutrals sleep with males?
Or do all three categories now need separate sleeping arrangements?

Very confusing, and no guidance from Guiding.

Also, the announcement about the changes to the REN almost went unnoticed. They were announced at the bottom of an email titled GDPR.