International Womens day celebration for children

[iloveithere]

DD has been invited to

'Celebrate International Womes Day with xxx Guides'

It is for 'young women, mums, daughters and grandmothers'
Activities on offer are:

card making, how to make a relaxing bath bomb, nail art, biscuit decorating, henna tattooing, and cultural awareness.

Am I alone in thinking these activities are sort of missing the point? It almost all seems to be to do with looking nice and cooking.

What other activities could I suggest? The age range in 10 upwards.

I like the way they have tacked "cultural awareness" on the end there!

Clearly a huge second billing to nail art

But seriously Guides are quite big, aren't they?

Shouldn't they be thinking about women's issues around the world? Guiding generally seems to be really hot on women's issues, so I'm a bit surprised. Maybe you are in a rogue brigade or something!

I mean quite Guides are quite big as in, they are bigger children, mine are quite small, rainbows age.

So older children who are able to understand issues IYSWIM, rather than little teenies.

Guides are 10-14 and not IME into deep thought.

Baking cakes and eating chocolate, yes. Running around and screening certainly, thinking about women's rights not a hope.

Seriously, the whole reason most teens go to guides and keep going is it's a space where they can still be big kids. The ones who want to behave like teens leave.

Preteen arts and crafts like that is just what they enjoy. Even though they are often the more academic girls, guides is an escape from school, they will resist history of famous woman and anything that feels like work.

The trick is to accept guides is a childish haven from the teen world and get as many young women as possible into rangers.

DD1's ranger group have had deep philosophical debates about abortion, euthanasia and all kinds of deep topics.

I thought that Guides were quite political - there was that big study they released recently about their members experience of the world which was basically about misogyny?

Maybe I have got teh wrong end of the stick.

Maybe it varies between packs or whatever they're called?

Even DD1 got a serious topic for "world thinking day" recently which was about female education around the world. She is 6.

Yes Guides can understand 'issues', but they get enough of that sort of stuff in PHSE, geography, history and science at school.

As I say Guides, especially 12.5-14y ones are usually the cleverer, less in to hair, boys and music girls. They work hard at school and come to Guides to be children and relax.

I didn't realise that there was a "type" with Guides.

I didn't go myself so that is interesting info.

That's fine, Guides as R&R.
But why offer those particular activities and link them yo International Women's Day?
On their website it actually suggests:

'Donate to World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, official charity partner, empowering girls to become leaders and advocates in their communities and on the world stage. World's largest voluntary movement dedicated to girls and young women.'

I'd feel a bit deceived if decorating biscuits and painting your nails were seen as first-rate examples of empowerment.

HQ send out worthy publicity, local Guide units design events DDs will actually go to.

Round here the DCs do so many activities you rely very heavily on pester power to get the poor mums in the car yet again.

I really don't know why guide HQ bother, most of the worthy stuff goes in the bin.

DD2 is pretty soppy about little children, so she tends to have more patience with some charity stuff than me or DD1, but that's it.

It's all very laudable trying to be political and big up the empowering women and girls stuff and I know they do it because they feel they have too as Guides is single sex and a charity, but truthfully it just generates recycling.

It's one of the reasons that some join the scouts as well.
I can't ever remember them nail painting or making bath bombs.
I think it would be great if the scouting movement celebrated IWD with awareness-raising and fun or engaging activities.

True, DD2 was a Scout for a bit. No nail painting and no 'issues' either they did just get on with having fun.

No endless planning and trying to get 10y to organise themselves either (this is also a disaster at guides, they only ever plan to cook).

Scouts understand that this age group want to be doing something after a day at school, not sitting about talking.

Unfortunately all the interesting scout trips clashed with ballet show rehearsals and my theatrical hike hating DD2 left.

'HQ send out worthy publicity, local Guide units design events DDs will actually go to.'

But it should be possible for them to be combined, so that an essential message and an important day is marked with fun and engaging activities, so that they learn and think as well as socialise.