Guide Challenge Badge - Unit Guidelines

I visited the annual County Leadership Qualification Training weekend yesterday to do the Guide section training. It was lovely to see so many new young leaders, and the enthusiasm was infectious but what was alarming was the percentage in our small Guide group who didn't know about unit guidelines! So I thought I had better check to make sure we are correct (we re-do the guidelines at the start of each September) and all the guides sign them. Here is the extract from the Guide Challenge badge online:

 Over a 12-month period, be a reliable member of your Patrol.

• Talk to your Patrol about what it's like to belong to that team and make one suggestion for improvement.
• Sign and keep the unit's Guidelines.
• If you have sometimes found the Guidelines difficult to keep, discuss this with your Patrol and make suggestions for changes.

Girlguiding Emergency File

Happy New Year for 2015!

This is a new resource sent to the main unit contact (and featured in the last Trainers' mailing on email). It is A5 size and designed to be kept with the unit at all times and needs to be populated with unit emergency contact details, healthcare plans & activity risk assessments. It also includes templates for Emergency Contact Information, Witness Statements, & Fire Evacuation Information. It's the first time I've seen the risk management flowchart, risk assessment matrix & members' benefits scheme so widely published - I do hope there will be some publicity & explanation to come.
Extra blank forms can be printed from the forms area within the resource library once logged onto the members area.

   

Being Prepared!

A really good Risk Assessment resource updated in 2013 after 10 years.It's a lot lighter but is a downloadable resource rather than a purchased one. The case studies have been updated, but the art work is identical so well worth retrieving before recycling the one on the left. The old one had a rather extensive table of things that could go wrong which is missing from the new version but not a great loss. There are now some separate flow charts (not included in the resource) on risk management & "Can I do an activity with my unit?" and a Risk Assessment Template which are useful training tools.

A way to display the Brownie Promise

This was given to me by a very resourceful Leader I met at a training in Newent last month. A split pin has been used so the flower can be turned and the lines of the Promise have been numbered to help the Brownie learn her promise - a lovely idea.

Thank you.

A Prayer for an AGM

Extract from "A little Book of Prayers" by Lilian Woodward 1996. Mrs Woodward died recently and had been very active in Mid Glos guiding for many years. This is a super little book with many prayers for different guiding occasions including last night at camp and around the camp fire. We used this one at our recent AGM:

O Lord God we come before you at the beginning of our Annual General Meeting to praise you for all the good things that have taken place in our Division/District since we met last year.

For the friendships that have been made and the good that has been done in caring for those who needed help.

We thank you for those who have served the Division/District so faithfully during the year, giving of their time and energy and not sparing themselves in any way. Help us not to take it all for granted.

So often we take what Guiders have to offer without acknowledging their dedication to the Movement, and often forget that the service offered is voluntary, not seeking any reward.

May all that is said and done here tonight be for the furtherance of our Movement and prove to be a blessing in the days to come.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord

 

Amen

Reflection on adapting a training

1st Promise Training in April

This is the first Brownie Adventure training in April 2014 when the new resource was freshly published. The turn out was low only 4 leaders representing just 2 units, because it was the night before the Brownie Birthday PGL weekend. The resource wasn't widely available at this point so I took the approach of colour photocopying & laminating the pages so everyone could get to look at the pages. It proved to be quite a challenging training simply because the leaders present weren't the ones who needed the training. They had a fantastic amount of experience with a huge amount to share, maybe just a little too much to share and I was having trouble getting word in edge way! I also bought rather cheap paper tablecloths so when I got the leaders to write their evaluation on the table cloth it seeped through to the table! So please be aware if you try that with the girls.
 

Unofficial Moving Up resource

A Kindle e-book first published in March 2014 by a young leader called Rebecca Craven, its only 57 pages long and costs £3.08 but the young author has a lot of energy. Rebecca has included a section asking other Leaders what has girl guiding done for you that you wouldn't already have done? It certainly got me thinking about my trip to Our Chalet, my stay at Pax Lodge with my sister, meeting all the wonderful people in BGIFC, my weekend at the USA Girl Scout conference talking about British Guiding and how old my first Brownies will be now (at least 35 years old now)!  

"If it wasn't for guiding, I would never have......"

 

Rebecca has done a lot of research into the movement's history, and surprised me with a couple of things I didn't know, but the real strength of this resource is to show it to your Guides contemplating the Senior Section. I think this e book could play a role in getting your girls to move up.