Girls With Attitude

A few weekends ago, I headed up to Lincolnshire to lead a training session for volunteers from Girlguiding Lincolnshire South at their county training day. I started a very convoluted journey towards becoming a qualified trainer in Girlguiding a few years ago now and due to some paperwork errors along the way I've done more 'unofficial' training than official steps towards becoming a recognised trainer in the meantime. A new, more streamlined system came into play this January, and so this recent session was my first observed practise towards getting the qualification.

Girls With Attitude

 

The session I lead was entitled 'Girls With Attitude' and the aim was to enable volunteer leaders to use existing Girlguiding resources to address some of the issues that are encapsulated in the 'Girls Attitudes Survey'. This survey is an annual piece of research that looks at the contemporary views of girls and young women (not necessarily members of Girlguiding) and for the first time this year, they asked some boys their thoughts too.

I started the session by asking the participants to select one fact from the table that particularly interested them. They were all facts from the 2013 survey results and covered a wide range of issues. During our introductions the facts chosen included:

• One in five girls of primary school age say they have been on a diet. 
• Two in three girls aged 11 to 21 think that there are not enough women in leadership positions in the UK (66%).
• Most girls deal with online abuse on their own and informally rather than reporting it.
• A good job comes top of the list of what girls say they need in life to do well and be happy in the future, and seven out of ten want to combine having children and maintaining a career. 

Some of these are concerning. Some are reassuring. But all of them can be addressed in some way using age appropriate resources produced by Girlguiding. As a large group (I had nearly 30 participants in a school classroom) I set up a selection of activities from different resources and allowed time for everyone to try the activities they wanted before facilitating a discussion on those sensitive issues that may occur when addressing these kind of issues.

The majority say that sex education at school does not focus enough on relationships.

My first activity was suitable for all age groups and taken from "Together We Can" - family constellations. Black card, star stickers and glitter glue was all that was needed and I asked participants to create a constellation that represented their family and their relationships. By using different colours for different types of relationship, it's a thought provoking activity for any age group. My example had myself, my partner and our dog as a triangle in the centre with my parents and sister to one side and my in-laws to the other. The beauty of this activity is that it made people think about the people in their lives and how they relate to one another - how much they disclosed and shared in discussion with the others taking part was purely down to what they felt comfortable sharing. It's the thinking part and the listening that's the most important. I think its a great way to think about the diversity of our relationships, I put my dog on because she literally effects how I live my life on a daily basis and is a great contributor to my happiness. I delineated on how much I communicate with that person rather than prioritising blood relatives over newer acquaintances. The thought process will be age appropriate as younger girls may think more about siblings and parents and the teenagers and adults may think about the intimate relationships they create.

58% of 16-21 year olds say they would like to become a leader in their chosen profession. 

My second activity was a form of silent auction from 'On Your Marks' - to be adapted for the age group and suitable for a not so silent format in a different situation. I listed a number of different ambitions and priorities and with a budget of £100 we each had to say how much we would spend from our budget on achieving each one. Happiness and health came top amongst the group of adults, but it was clear that options like succeeding in exams or performing in a dance show may be higher amongst different age groups. It was anonymous and we compared priorities to see how they might change at different stages of our lives.

71% of 11- to 21-year-olds say they would like to lose weight.

Activities looking at self-esteem and self perception are relatively common within current Girlguiding resources and I found one based on self portraits in resources for the Rainbows (5-7), Brownies (7-10), Guides (10-14) and a new WAGGGS resource called 'Free Being Me'. These varied from asking the youngest girls to use a mirror to draw a self portrait to asking the oldest ones to say why they liked or disliked parts of their anatomy and personality in a self completed quiz sheet. These are the resources that I think need a confident leader to deliver them. When we ask girls to think and talk about the hang ups we have with their body its important to be able to not reflect our own body issues onto the girls and draw a particular focus to the positives to create a generation of body confident young women. That's why I'm particularly happy to see Free Being Me rolled out with trained peer educators and extra training in the use of the resource for leaders.

One in four girls aged 11 to 21 say they would consider cosmetic surgery (27%), rising to almost a third of those aged 16 to 21 (31%).

The resource name for my next activity escapes - it is aimed at Guides (10-14) and I believe it was in partnership with Dove. 'Mould Me Pretty' asked participants to sculpt something beautiful from playdough and then allowed them to make changes to someone elses design. The aim was to discuss the concept of 'beauty in the eye of the beholder' and how some changes can be irreversible.

Due to a lack of women leaders, 54% of girls feel that they have less chance of succeeding themselves.

My last activity was from a new resource aimed at 10-14 year olds - Go For It! Be The Change. This resource was written by two senior section members who went to the Girls World Forum in Chicago in 2012 (the successor to the Young Women's World Forum event I attended in 2010). It aims to increase girls advocacy and leadership skills and increase their interest in all forms of politics. I asked participants to think about powerful women - to make a list of women they thought powerful, to write down the characteristics they thought powerful women had and to use a variety of materials to create a poster displaying their messages about why powerful women are great. The feedback I got was that its difficult to think of that list of women, we all came up with a similar shortlist of powerful females hence the need for the activity in the first place! Others went deep into the terminology and when working with girls there might be more time to really get into the nitty gritty of what we mean by powerful that just wasn't there in a training session that lasted under two hours. However the activity achieved its aim as it helped us think about how you might suceed and achieve ambitions even when the road is currently not well travelled by other women.

My Evaluation

I left the session knowing that I hadn't made the connections between the acitivities and the issues as explicit as I might have liked. But that doesn't mean the session wasn't a success. I believe those volunteers will go back to their groups with new activities and a desire to use some of these existing resources that they might not have considered before. I know that Girlguiding resources are designed to be relevant and useful to girls living in the here and now - some have stayed the same in our 104 year history and others have adapted with the times. That's why I know that whether I conveyed the link or not, these volunteers will be giving girls the life skills for the world they are facing.

That's how Girlguiding changes to world, one girl at a time.