Being Our Best update

Girlguiding Deputy CEO Ruth Marvel talks about our achievements and what’s next for this strategy to ensure life-changing experiences for girls

The Being Our Best strategy has meant a new programme, extensive safeguarding training, fresh resources, and a clear mandate to advocate for girls and young women. Girlguiding Deputy CEO Ruth Marvel celebrates our successes and talks about what’s next.

‘Girlguiding is such a phenomenal organisation. We want to free up everybody’s time and energy to focus on what we’re all here for: making fantastic experiences for girls and changing their lives,’ says Ruth.

‘The past five years have seen huge change for Girlguiding in the UK. I’m so impressed by how units around the country have embraced the evolution sparked by Being Our Best.

‘This is the first time we’ve ever given our programme a complete overhaul and it’s something that’s really core to the ordinary running of all our units. We wanted to make sure we had a really excellent programme that was easy for you to pick up without having to do lots of planning.

‘We also wanted it to be consistent across the age ranges, so the themes girls explore at Rainbows run right through to Rangers. It’s a real point of pride for me that we developed this together – girls and leaders created and tested every part of it. Given our size, this is a phenomenal achievement!

‘When you work with young people, safeguarding has to be a priority, so we’ve done lots of work on this to make sure people get the training they need for the role they have. Last year, 40,000 people did our new safeguarding training, which is amazing.

‘That’s all down to volunteers like you running training locally in partnership nationally. Our numbers astonish me – it’s no mean feat to roll out a new training programme to that many volunteers, but it’s crucial. It’s important we keep girls safe and that our volunteers have the knowledge they need to do that confidently.

‘We’ve been working hard to get girls and young women’s voices heard, campaigning to change legislation on sex and relationships education, and training and developing young women in campaigning and advocacy.

‘This year, we had our first week of action, with the whole organisation taking part all over the country. And then of course there’s the Future Girl manifesto that has involved so many people. It’s brilliant and gives us a mandate to speak out about the things that girls care most about, locally and nationally.

‘We know the life of volunteers can be quite hard work and we want to make things easier so you can spend more time with your girls rather than filling in paperwork. Look out for lots of ideas on how we’re going to cut out the admin and make volunteering more rewarding, more flexible and more manageable.

‘Although we’ve got units all over the country, there are some places with long waiting lists to join, and other places where there are no units at all. We’re exploring ways we can take Girlguiding to where people are, rather than the other way around – things like holiday guiding, for example.

‘We want to be more inclusive and open to the outside world, so that people who can’t volunteer but who want to support us can, and to ensure there are more flexible ways for people to get involved.’