After the excitement of last year’s Euros, many more young women now see football as accessible and exciting. 1 leader in Anglia now has a quarter of her Guides playing in the local league!

Here are some ideas from young members of 1st Fakenham Guides on what they’ll be doing in their World Cup-themed evening.

1. Come in your football kit or you could amend 1 of the recycled fashion UMAs and create you’ve very own team kit.
2. Everyone loves a trophy – design and create a trophy for the winner of your competition. You could amend the Build a Beast Guide UMA and turn this into creating a mascot instead.
3. Make the tallest goalpost possible. With limited materials, the group that can make the tallest goalpost (tower) in a set time is the winner.
4. Create a football pom pom. Create pom poms out of black and white wool for a football-themed craft activity.
5. Football skills competition. Work in small groups to gain points in each of the following:
   • Dribble the ball through a slalom of cones – 1st group with all team members back wins and good for smaller spaces where kicking a ball towards a goal isn’t an option.
   • Penalty shoot-out competition into a goal or use a target area if your space is smaller with the closest to the centre target in 1 ‘kick’ being the winner.
   • Passing practice – each group stands in a circle, how many times can they pass the ball between themselves without it leaving the circle?
6. If using full-sized footballs isn’t an option for your space set up a table/floor football pitch. Use a ping pong ball or similar and set up 2 goals and use masking tape to mark basic pitch lines. Each team member gets a straw and takes it in turns to blow the ball towards the other team’s goal.
7. Pin the badge on the football shirt.

Finally, you could get group members to pick 1 of the names of the teams out of a hat. Make bunting or flags so they can support the team throughout the competition. Parents can download a match tracker sheet from the Girlguiding Anglia website to help follow the progress of teams.

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Life is often challenging and it’s normal to feel anxious sometimes, which can spur us on to take action, being aware of risks and getting a sense of proportion. However, the anxious thoughts can tip over into being hard to control. We may be good at hiding our anxiety or it may be overly affecting our behaviour.

The Mental Health Foundation has an easy-to-read page on their website, explaining what it is, what the symptoms are, how to get help and how to look after ourselves. See here:

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/anxiety

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1st Response is Girlguiding’s first aid training and is completed by working through an eLearning and a training session of roughly 6 hours. The training maybe face to face or a mixture of face to face and webinar (live online training). Trainings are organised locally, normally by your county, and may use a Girlguiding trainer or an external trainer. If you are looking for a session, check with your county or look on our region and county calendar to see if there are any sessions in neighbouring counties that would welcome you.

If you hold a valid full external first aid qualification you may already have the training you need to provide first aid support in guiding. The Girlguiding website tell you more. Currently in Anglia, external courses need to be verified by your local commissioner using the 1st Response syllabus checklist. This can be a little tricky for commissioners to do and we want to support you as much as possible, so we have implemented a new role of first aid verifier and have appointed five people across the region to provide much needed support. Once the relevant pages on the learning platform have been created and tested, our verifiers will use this to approve new external first aid courses. In the meantime, if you or your local commissioner need support, speak to your county or the region team.

One of the common medical emergencies that we might experience in our units is an allergic reaction. Leaders should work with girls and their parents or carers to complete an adjustment plan for young members with allergies. Many of the questions may feel irrelevant, however, the questions on early warning signs and what to do in an emergency could save their life. Just fill in as much as you can and commit to reviewing it regularly. Ask if there is any critical advice from medical professionals or allergy consultants and make a note of it as part of your planning. That way you’ll feel confident to deal with an emergency should one arise.

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In 2022 a group of Queen’s Guides in Anglia formed a project group to review and develop supporting materials for leaders or local commissioners to use to support young members to transition between sections.

Over our June, July and August Signpost newsletter, we will be launching these newly branded resources.

In June, you can expect a helpful flowchart overviewing the process and some template letters you can use, either as the leader moving your members up or as a template to be given to your feeder units.

In July, more information will follow for young members moving on at 18 and further transitions leaflets.

In August, we plan to launch the brilliant challenge pack our volunteers have created for all sections.

Keep visiting the resources section of our website and the member support section to access these new resources.

Here, our group of Queens Guides introduce you to their resources:

Have you got a young member in your unit ready to transition to the next section?

There are lots of resources and support on offer for you, the young member, and their parent.

Moving up in sections can be a daunting process for many.

For members who don’t know what to expect, for parents who need to learn more about the section, and for leaders who need to support the move.

Why not think about having a transition week in your division or district?

We would recommend working within your area to support young members with the move. Within this week you could:

• Offer a taster session at your unit for the section below your own
• Have your commissioners pop by to help with information for parents/guardians
• Complete elements of the transition badges
• Provide letters to members in your unit about the nearby units
• Run activities in your meeting about future opportunities in Girlguiding

On the Girlguiding Anglia website, you will find the following resources:

• A letter template – in this resource, you can fill in the relevant spaces with details about available sections for the young member to join. We hope this will provide you with a structure for the information needed by parents and guardians.
• A transition challenge pack – we all love an opportunity to add a badge to our blanket! Available for all young members when they transition from one section to the next this will give you all the information you need to support members to complete each badge.