Blog / November 1st, 2023
Uniformed Youth Fund – November 2023
It’s been a busy couple of months since I wrote the last blog. If you didn’t catch that you can find it here – you’ll find an overview of the project and what we hope to achieve in the next year or so.
What’s happened since your last blog?
We’ve financially supported 3 new units via our new unit grant – welcome to 1st Chigwell Rangers, 5th Ely Guides and 1st Thedwastre Guides. Also a big shout out to 1st Wixhams Guides who first met in March 2023 and got in touch. I’ve been to two student freshers fairs and hopefully recruited about 12 new volunteers from these.
I said in my last blog that I was going to attend the commissioner and adviser day organised by Girlguiding Lincolnshire South. Sadly I was too sick to go but I’m still hoping to catch up with the county team soon. I was very sad not to be going as the day had a wide variety of sessions and talks and I was hoping to dip my ear in to some of them. They had everything from inclusion to GO and many topics in between.
What’s inspired you recently?
I’m loving the new girl recruitment materials from Girlguiding. The graphics for Rangers in particular are so fun and relaxed and remind me of my time as a Ranger. I have so many memories of camping and sharing new experiences with my friends. We know from our inclusion audit that Girlguiding is currently not representative of the UK population. Specifically, we struggle to attract and retain girls and volunteers of colour and lower socio-economic backgrounds. We want to do better at this. Our research shows that girls and volunteers want to see more role models with lived experiences that are similar to their own. The new images show a wider variety of people and the Ranger images are my favourite.
The recruitment kit for adult volunteers also includes social media content that is specific to the section that you want to recruit for volunteers. We know that different things motivate different people to volunteer so the suggested wording reflects this and points them to a section that lets them do that.
We’ve seen Girlguiding’s impact report for 2023 is now out, give us your highlight.
It wasn’t a surprise to me that UK girls report lower confidence than UK boys. There’s no denying that girls face more challenges and many of these are explored in the Girls’ attitudes survey. What really surprised me is how much Girlguiding makes a difference.
Girlguiding girls are up to 23% more confident than the UK girls’ average.
What’s even better is that the influence of Girlguiding on girls’ confidence almost triples between early and mid-adolescence. This is the age range that I’m hoping to create more spaces for. Early to mid-adolescence is around 11-15 so Guides and Rangers to us! Guide and Ranger leaders, you are doing a fantastic job. If you need any help or support to increase the number of girls in your unit, do let me know.