| Sandra's guide pages |
| Guides in the UK |
| We are a guide company or unit (like a troop, just a different name). We've got 24 guides, 3 guiders (leaders) and a Young Leader (YL - a junior leader. She's 17, but YLs can be anywhere from 15 to, um, 18 I think!). Guides are between 10 and 14 years old. They don't *have* to go at 14 any more, but the huge majority go either then or earlier. Some units have as many as 36 girls (or more), and not many have fewer than 10 girls. The biggest difference I've spotted between the way US & UK groups are organised is that, if I'm right, your girls stick together all the way up through the sections - so they'll be with the same girls as cadettes as they are as brownies? Well here the units are fixed and the girls "pass through". 193B Edinburgh Guides had 9 new girls this year - all of them came up from the local brownie pack. There have been quite a lot of changes to the programme recently, and one of the biggest thing is they're now meant to do a lot of stuff in their patrols (smaller groups, between 4 and 8 girls). We have activity packs called "Go For It"s, each of which is on a theme (there's Go For It - Peace, Go For It - Healthy Eating, Go For It - Parties, and so on). The patrol pick one of the packs and organise 4 activities from it which they do during meetings. If you want to see some Go For Its, some of us have written our own and they are on http://www.guidinguk.com Two of the groups are doing a sports Go For It - last week one of the groups went rollerblading and the others did a fitness activity. The other groups made paper aeroplanes (trying different designs and testing them), water bombs (from paper - harder than they look) and a Get Well Soon card for 2 of our girls who are ill. The other big thing is they've got rid of most of the interest badges (patches) which a lot of us are not too happy about! There's only about 20 badges now although they are bringing more in as they go. The actual badges are a lot bigger and brighter than they used to be - they now have pictures on rather than just small symbols. Opinions are divided over whether this is a good thing or not! You can find the syllabi for all the badges on the official GirlguidingUK website. Everything's meant to be team based - there's very little for individuals until they get to the Baden Powell Challenge. That's the highest award for the guide age group. We love camping (of course!). Because we're in Edinburgh which is a great city to live in, there are several campsites locally. Our nearest is called Bonaly, and it's owned and run by the (boy) scouts. There's some pictures on http://www.edinburgh-scout.org.uk We're going there for an activity day in March. We'll go in the morning, do the assault course and a wide game, then have a packed lunch which each girl will bring. In the afternoon we'll do grass sledging, crate climbing, play with the earth ball & maybe some more games if there's time. Then we'll light fires & cook our evening meal. After that we'll have a campfire (songs and such) then go home. It's rather too cold to actually camp at this time of year here. The guides' favourite activity for meetings is anything to do with food... I think that's the same wherever you are in the world! We did edible campfires earlier this term. They look pretty cool. This week we're toasting marshmallows over small candles. |
| I wrote this for an American Girl Scouter last Thinking Day (2002), to give her a flavour for guiding in the UK. |