Guides

Guides are usually aged between 10 and 14, although some Guides like to stay until they are older. Any girl over the age of ten can become a Guide as long as she is able to understand, and wants to make, the Guide Promise.

Being a Guide is all about belonging to a group, learning new skills, making new friends and helping others. Each Guide is encouraged to achieve her own personal goals through a progressive programme with the opportunity to work for a wide variety of badges. This allows the girl to mature and develop at her own pace.

Guides work together in Patrols, groups of four to eight girls, providing a ready-made group of friends and helping the girls to feel that they belong to something special. They elect their own leader. A Patrol plans its own activities with the support of the Guide Guider so that each Guide learns to share in decisions that affect herself and others in the Patrol.

What do Guides do?

All Guiding activities are based on the Eight Point Programme followed by all Guides in The Guide Association. This is adapted to suit each girl's age and ability. The Eight Point Programme for Guides is:

• Giving service
• Exploring the arts
• Getting to know people
• Enjoying the out-of-doors
• Becoming a homemaker
• Thinking for yourself
• Keeping fit
• Keeping the Guide Law

There are also more than 80 Interest badges ranging from Musician to Interpreter, Cook to Conservation. The programme provides a framework within which a Guide can choose things which are right for her, allowing her to mature and develop at her own pace. Each Guide is encouraged to achieve this by setting her own personal goals through a series of badges: the Yellow, Green, Red and Blue Trefoils. She can also gain the Baden-Powell Trefoil which shows she has achieved a certain standard in a variety of programme activities.

Community and charity work such as fundraising for good causes and generally helping others are all part of being a Guide: it is a Guide tradition to do a good turn every day.

Guides also have the opportunity to take part in outdoor activities such as camping, and sometimes in specialist activities (fencing, horse-riding, abseiling, climbing or caving, for example), under the supervision of qualified instructors. There may also be special outings and events at weekends or during the holidays. The highlight of the year is often when the unit goes away together on a camp or holiday. They may stay in tents or at an indoor holiday home.