Girl Guide programme to get revamp

In an effort to keep the interest of its members and to attract new ones, plans are in the works to revamp the Girl Guide programme in this country.

Word of this has come from Nadia Skeete, Chief Commissioner of The Girl Guides Association of Barbados. She made the disclosure while speaking to the media on Sunday afternoon following the Association’s thanksgivingservice at the St. Michael’s Cathedral to mark its 101st anniversary.

Skeete said that the almost 3 000-strong association, made up of females ranging from four years and up, are enrolled in four basic sections – Blossoms, Brownies, Guides and the senior section which is comprised of Young Leaders and Rangers. She said that at present the Brownies is the largest section, primarily because it is easier to capture girls between the ages of seven and 11 years, with all the fun activities that theyengage in. She said as they grow older, the interest begins to wane.

“Our smallest sections would be the senior section and the Girl Guides section. There is a little struggle there because there are so many things that pull the teenagers away, but we are revamping our Girl Guide programme. It is more about finding out what the girls want to do. So there have been a lot of conversations about what they want to do, and what they need us to do for them. It is so much different from when I would have been a Guide. Leadership obviously was a common thread, but now it is more about promoting that and having the girls understand that they have a say in what they do... They are the persons that are helping to mould and shape themselves,” the Chief Commissioner noted.

She added, “So we are trying to get the girls to discover their potential instead of saying ‘you have potential, you can do this and you can do that’ – have the girls look for that within themselves, find what they are good at and work towards that, no matter what it may be.”

The Chief Commissioner said that the revamping will take some time to execute, as they seek to take all matters into consideration. She explained that this will help to ensure that the programme is catering to needs of most girls, whose interest are ever-changing in their teenage years.

With that in mind, she said the Association is also about to embark on a project dubbed “Girl Guides Strong 100% Renewable Energy”, in keeping with the tremendous interest being shown by girls in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. She said STEM is an area that the Association is keen to pursue as it endeavours to develop well-rounded girls. Skeete indicated that the project will be implemented from the Brownies up to the senior section.

“Every girl does not want to be a lawyer or an accountant – there are girls who want to be scientists. We had somebody from NASA come and talk to our girls about what it is like to work there and the girls were so enthused that we have asked for somebody else to come,” she added. (JRT)