Girlguiding

We want to encourage volunteer recruitment across the UK, and we need you to be involved! Do you volunteer with Girlguiding? Balance work/family commitments with unit meetings and admin? Have some wacky and wonderful stories? If the answer is yes, send us a message! We're looking for a Young Adult Leader (between 18-30yrs) of a Guide or Ranger unit to be the figurehead of our 2024 volunteer recruitment campaign, to highlight the benefits of volunteering and how rewarding it can be. If you think this could be you, or know someone who fits the bill, please email [email protected] and we will get back to you as soon as possible! *Please be aware that there will be filming involved with the project, taking place in later August/Early September.

Back in May, we called for the UK’s major political parties to have frontbenches that are at least 50% women. The UK government frontbench is now majority women, and we’re delighted! The UK government joins Scottish government, Welsh government, and the Northern Ireland Executive in meeting our ask, and for the first time every nation has at least 50% women in ministerial roles. We’re also very pleased to hear that Nusrat Ghani MP, Caroline Nokes MP and Judith Cummins MP have been appointed as an all-women Deputy Speaker lineup in The House of Commons. We know representation alone isn’t enough, but this small step represents massive progress towards a future where the voices of all girls are valued. That’s more important than ever with the multiple crises facing this generation of young people. We look forward to working with politicians from all parties to build a fairer, safer UK for girls and young women.

🚨 Appearance pressures are one of the biggest concerns amongst girls in the UK, and girls are finding their own negative thoughts about their looks to be all consuming. We're urging the new Government to make it a requirement for advertisers, including influencers, to be clear when filters, editing software or artificial intelligence has been used to change or create an image. Our Girls' Attitudes Survey asks over 2,000 girls and young women both inside and outside of Girlguiding how they feel about the pressures facing them today. The full report will be released in October, but our initial findings show girls as young as 7 feel they're held to a different beauty standard than boys of their age, and that they face more appearance-based scrutiny. Girlguiding advocate Erin, aged 16, says: 'The rise in the usage of filters on social media is significantly knocking the confidence of young girls all over the UK. It is clear to see that immediate action is required. It is time for advertisers and content creators to take accountability to ensure that girls of today, and of the future, can be protected from the harm edited images can cause'.

Thanks to our partnership with ODEON Cinemas Group, Girlguiding advocates Robin and Millie met with some incredible women from the world of film 📽️ We hosted the Women in Film roundtable discussion together to find out more about the issues impacting women, and to share inspiring experiences. Robin and Millie were joined by BAFTA Young Presenter Precious Assah, actor and producer Hester Ruoff (Boiling Point, Gassed Up), ODEON Head of Guest Marketing Charlotte Ullathorne, Sky Director of Original Film Julia Stuart and film reporters Shahed Ezaydi from Stylist and Tori Brazier from Metro.

For Disability Pride Month, we're highlighting some of the amazing things members are doing to make guiding accessible for all girls. We spoke to volunteer Lucy about Girlguiding North West's 'cloud' units and how going virtual is helping to make guiding more inclusive. Swipe for some feedback from girls themselves and read the full chat here: https://lnkd.in/gpfEmJRz.

We’re very proud that our social media and PR teams have been shortlisted in the 2024 Charity Times Awards! We’re nominated for Best Social Media Presence for our work on TikTok and PR Team of the Year. Woohoo! Huge congratulations to both very hardworking teams. Wish us luck for the ceremony in September! 🤞

We're pleased to hear that two Ministers attending Cabinet will have a focus on Women & Equalities and that these will be a part of Department for Education. We hope this means more of a focus on the issues affecting girls and young women at school, online and in public. Congratulations Bridget Phillipson and Anneliese Dodds, we look forward to working with you to build a fairer, safer UK for girls and young women!

We know Girlguiding members love collecting badges, so we're working with them to create 72 new interest badges across Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers! You can get involved by creating your own interest badge using our new activity and sending your design to us - find out more here: https://lnkd.in/e66bZz3q. The new badges will be available from July 2025 when we’re celebrating our programme’s 7th birthday, and you have until 30 November 2024 to send us your dream designs. Here are some amazing examples from young members (and our deputy chief guide, Sally Kettle) - can you guess the interests these badges represent?

July is Disability Pride Month! Celebrated in the UK since 2015, Disability Pride Month is a chance to raise awareness and celebrate the diversity of the disabled community. The colours of the Disability Pride flag represent different things: Red – physical disabilities and conditions Gold - neurodivergence like autism and ADHD White – invisible and undiagnosed conditions Blue – mental health conditions Green – sensory disabilities and conditions The design has lots of meaning, too - the diagonal stripes represent cutting across the barriers that disabled people face, and the colours are muted and arranged to reduce flickering when scrolling past the flag online.

Over the weekend we celebrated International Women in Engineering Day ⚙️🔧 Meet former Girlguiding member, Lillie, for a day in her life as a Machinist on an advanced engineering apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce. Rolls-Royce and Girlguiding share an ambition to inspire girls and young women to explore science and engineering. Lillie says, "I never wanted to be an engineer at school but creative skills such as art, and an interest in how things worked helped to direct me down this career path. Girlguiding offer so many opportunities to help build our future, and the role models there and experiences I had was one of the reasons I went into engineering" Our friends at Rolls-Royce sponsor stages 2, 4 and 6 of the innovative skills builder and also created badge booster activities for these stages 🌟 Find out more about our partnership at Rolls-Royce: https://lnkd.in/ew_AfsQH