Girls guide the way to building confidence and living healthily

If your idea of the Irish Girl Guides is one of hiking up mountains, camping by rivers, cooking outdoors and generally gambolling through fields, you're right. But, the organisation – which recently celebrated 100 years in Ireland – is also keenly aware of its role in preparing its members for 21st-century adulthood.

Health information packs
To that end, the Irish Girl Guides developed new health information packs for senior members (aged 14-26) to keep in touch with the changing nature of young people's lives.

"We realised that we needed more information about dating and sexual relationships, bullying, mental health and awareness about drugs and drinking," says Helen Concannon, chief commissioner of the Irish Girl Guides (IGG).

The information packs have been made available to girl guide units throughout Ireland since October.

Jenna Goodwin (23) is an IGG leader and student of business and German at Trinity College Dublin.

“The guides offer girls a safe space to learn about and tackle the issues they face in their lives. Social media brings problems and benefits and if you don’t feel good about yourself, you need tools to cope with pressures. Irish Girl Guides give girls the confidence to say no and believe in themselves,” she says.

Concannon adds that the IGG now promotes anti-bullying through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and on its website.

“We still do badges [the safe surf badge on internet safety is a new one] for various skills and have residential weekends away but our core message always is about taking part in group activities and building confidence by doing things,” says Concannon.

The wider healthy living messages are spread throughout all members. For instance, each member – Ladybirds are aged five to seven; Brownies seven to 11; Guides 11-15, with senior members up to age of 26 – is taught the importance of hand-washing through an activity which involves putting glitter on their hands and then running around the room shaking hands with everyone.

“This teaches them how easily germs are spread and how important it is to wash your hands before you eat,” explains Jemma Lee, the Irish Girl Guides support officer based in the IGG offices on Pembroke Road, Dublin.

The girls also learn about the importance of hand-washing in the developing world through campaign links with international aid agencies.

Collaborative approach
It's this experiential, collaborative and investigative approach that is central to the IGG learning ethos.

The 16-26 year olds also partake in a four-day hiking challenge in which they have to live self-sufficiently and look at the community/social fabric of the places they visit, by speaking to the locals about such things as playground provision.

The consistent emphasis on healthy living has also resulted in the organisation being the first volunteer-led group to receive the Gold Standard Health Quality Mark from the National Youth Council in 2003 – an award it has maintained ever since.

“There’s an optimism that goes with guiding. We develop the girls’ problem-solving abilities; they learn to make a decision, go with it and make the best of it. A guide sings or smiles under all difficulties,” says Concannon.

Goodwin believes the Irish Girl Guides has a more modern image now. “We are more focused on millennium development goals. It’s not just about camping and sewing and cooking.

“Last year, we had a beautician in to our unit to do facials with the girls for their beauty badge. We’re a ‘movement’ so we move with the times and we hope to provide what girls need.”

irishgirlguides.ie

Irish Girl Guides unit in Crumlin hospital
A children’s hospital might seem like an unusual place to have an activity club but the flexible nature of the Irish Girl Guides unit in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin is what makes it work.

The unit meets every Thursday evening and adapts the programme around the girls who are in the hospital at the time. It has been running for five years.

“We do games, arts and crafts. There is less emphasis on physical games as we have to be mindful of wheelchairs, drips and wounds,” explains Róisín Fitzgerald, one of the guide leaders who volunteers at the Crumlin hospital unit.

As the leaders won’t know how many girls and what age they will be, there is a lot of impromptu decision-making around weekly activities.

“Really, it’s a chance for the girls to meet girls from other wards. We have so much fun together even though the girls are sick,” says Fitzgerald.

Any girl in hospital – and even some of their visitors – can join in the activities. Nobody has to be an official member of the Irish Girl Guides but some do join after their stay in hospital. To date, Crumlin hospital is the only hospital in Ireland to have a girl guides unit.